Presentation on Long-Term Memory structure from Goldstein

1. Ch 6 Long Term Memory:
Structure
 Distinguishing between LTM and STM
 Episodic and semantic memory
 Priming, procedural memory, and
conditioning (implicit)
 Memory loss at the movies
declarative nondeclarative

2. Prelude: Amnesia
 Korsakoff’s syndrome – Condition in which
vitamin B1 deficiency, often associated with
alcoholism, leads to brain damage linked to
anterograde amnesia, an inability to retain new
information
 Patients may also exhibit retrograde amnesia, an
inability to remember the past
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3. Distinguishing Between LTM
and STM
 Long-term & short-term processes
 Serial position curve
 Coding in long-term memory
 Locating STM and LTM in the brain
 Types of LTM

4. Functions of LTM and LTM – STM
distinction
 LTM serves as both an archive for past events and a source of
frequent input to STM/working memory
 LTM has a longer duration (lifetime, though recent memories are
more detailed) and larger capacity (unlimited?) than does STM
 LTM input to STM permits us to interpret conversations, solve
problems, and make decisions
 STM/working memory deals
with the present, with
information from LTM available
to help us understand the
present by accessing prior
knowledge
 We may or may not consciously
realize how LTM shapes our
interpretations
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5. Introducing the serial position curve
(Murdoch, 1962)
 The serial position
curve is a function
that illustrates
recall performance
for different items
on a list (Murdoch, 1962)
 Compared to items in the middle, people
tend to have greater recall for items at
the beginning of list (primacy effect) and
items at the end of a list (recency effect)
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6. STM-LTM distinction: Explanation for
primacy and recency effects
 Primacy effect – attributed to more
frequent rehearsal of initial items,
transferring them to LTM
 Rundus (1971) provided evidence
that initial items were rehearsed
more frequently by asking
participants to rehearse aloud
 Recency effect – attributed to the
fact that last items still remain in
STM at time of recall
 Galnzer and Cunzer (1966) provided
evidence supporting the idea that
more recent items were still in STM
 How can primacy
and recency effects
be eliminated?
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7. Reducing/eliminating primacy and
recency effects (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1962, 1966)
 Presenting list more slowly reduces primacy
effect, as does other manipulation leading to
equal rehearsal
 Supports idea that rehearsal aids in transferring
information to LTM
 Performing distractor task
prior to recall eliminates
recency effect
 Supports idea that recency
effect applies to items in
STM
Because different manipulations influence recall of different parts
of a list that are linked to different memory systems, serial position
research provides evidence for STM-LTM distinction
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8. Locating STM and LTM in the brain:
Neuropsychological studies
 LTM deficit with
functioning STM
 Clive Wearing: Viral
encephalitis led to
inability to form new
LTM
 H. M.: Removal of
much of hippocampus
to reduce epileptic
seizures lead to
inability to form new
LTM
 STM deficit with
functioning LTM
 K.F.: Brain damage
from motorbike
accident led to poor
STM (evidence:
digit span task) but
normal LTM
 Why does this
pose a problem for
modal model?
Taken together, these findings demonstrate double dissociation,
suggesting that LTM and STM not only involve different
mechanisms, but also operate independently
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9. Locating STM and LTM in the brain:
Brain imaging (Talmi, Grady, Gshen-Gottstein, &
Moscovitch, 2005)
 Participants saw a list of words followed by a probe word that was
from the beginning of the list, end of the list, or not on the list
 Task: Indicate if word had been seen before
 Researchers used fMRI to measure brain activity as participants
were preparing to respond
 Results revealed that words from the beginning of the list
activated brain areas associated with both STM and LTM, whereas
words from the end of the list activated only areas associated with
STM
 Although Talmi et al. (2005) results suggested distinction,
subsequent imaging studies showed considerable overlap
 Possible reasons for overlap include ongoing “communication”
between STM – LTM or shared mechanisms for STM & LTM
Obj 2
BUT

10. STM-LTM distinction:
Memory codes
 STM
 Representation
(code) is primarily
acoustic, but may
also be visual and
semantic
 LTM
 Representation
(code) is primarily
semantic, but may
also be acoustic or
visual
 Recognition memory:
People indicated that
sentences similar in
meaning to one included
in passage were actually
included in passage
(Sachs, 1967)
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11. Types of LTM
Obj 3
declarative nondeclarative

12. Squire’s taxonomy
(from http://www.in-cites.com/papers/dr-larry-squire.html)
 “It became clear that memory is not a single entity
and that only one kind of memory is impaired
following damage to the medial temporal lobe.”
 “ Declarative memory supports our capacity to
recollect facts and events”
 “... a collection of nondeclarative memory abilities,
including the capacity for acquiring habits and
skills, simple forms of conditioning, and other
abilities that allow us to change through
experience how we interact with the world.”
a/k/a
implicit
memory
a/k/a
explicit
memory
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13. Squire’s taxonomy (continued)
 Declarative memory can be reported (“declared”)
 It is also called explicit memory & involves conscious
recollection of information
 It includes Tulving’s semantic (“knowing”) and episodic
(“self-knowing”) memory
 Nondeclarative memory includes information that
we may NOT be aware that we know
 Also called implicit memory, it has been termed
“memory without awareness” (Jacoby & Witherspoon,
1982), or, according to Tulving, “nonknowing”
 Among other types of memory, it includes procedural
memory
Obj 3

14. Distinguishing between LTM and
STM
Key points/terms/evidence
 Differences in
characteristics (e.g.,
duration) and
processes
 Serial position curve
 Primacy & recency
 Evidence for each
 Coding in LTM
 Evidence from
reading passage
demo
 Locating STM & STM in
the brain
 Neuropsychological
evidence (double
dissociations)
 Brain imaging
evidence
 Types of LTM

15. Episodic and Semantic
Memory (Explicit)
 Distinguishing between episodic and
semantic memory
 Separation of episodic and semantic
memories
 Connections between episodic and
semantic memories

16. Declarative/Explicit memory:
Episodic - semantic memory
distinction (Tulving, 1972)
 Tulving proposed distinction
between memory for facts and
general knowledge (semantic
memory “knowing”) and memory
for personally experienced events
(episodic memory “self-knowing”)
 Albany is the capital of
New York State.
(semantic)
 I earned my Ph.D. in 1998.
(Episodic)
Obj 4

17. The separation of episodic and
semantic memory
 Brain-imaging evidence (Levine et al., 2004)
 Participants kept diaries that included personal
events and facts that they knew
 While in an MRI scanner, participants listened to
audiotaped recordings of the events and facts
 The scan revealed that different brain regions were
activated by episodic and semantic memories
 Neuropsychological evidence
 Double dissociation supports idea of separate
mechanisms
Obj 4
 Because the extent of brain
damage & method of test may
differ for different patients,
additional evidence is
important

18. Connections between episodic and
semantic memory
 Episodic memories can be lost, leaving
only semantic
 Semantic memory can be enhanced by
association with episodic memory
 Semantic memory can influence
experience by influencing attention
 The more detailed your knowledge of a
subject, the greater the likelihood you will
remember new details of a related new
experience
Obj 4

19. Episodic and semantic memory:
Key points/terms/evidence
 Definitions of episodic
and semantic memory
 Separation of episodic
and semantic memory
 Neuropsychological
evidence
 Brain imaging evidence
 Three connections
between episodic and
semantic memory

20. Priming, Procedural Memory,
and Conditioning (Implicit)
 Priming
 Procedural memory

21. Testing implicit memory: Priming
 Explicit memory is tested via direct
tests such as recognition and recall
(with which you are all familiar)
 Implicit memory is tested via indirect
tests that do not specifically refer to
previously learned material
 Such tests often involved priming, when
presentation of one stimulus (the prime)
changes the speed or accuracy of response
to a test stimulus
Obj 5

22. Different types of priming
 Repetition priming – Test stimulus is the same
as or resembles the prime
 Test stimulus may be a word fragment
 Conceptual priming – The meaning of the test
stimulus is in some way related to the meaning
of the prime
 Presentation of category (e.g., furniture) as prime
may lead people to respond faster to category
members (e.g., chair)
 Priming is an example of implicit memory
because people typically do not remember
presentation of prime
Obj 5

23. Avoiding explicit remembering in a
priming task
 Introduce the prime in the context of a task
that does not appear to be a memory task
 Ask participants to respond to brief
questions about primes
 Use a test task that does not appear to be a
memory task
 Ask participants to complete word fragment
 Use a test task that emphasizes speed
 Reduces time for conscious recollection
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24. Stronger evidence for priming: Research
with amnesiac patients (Graf, Shimamura, & Squire,
1985)
Participants
 Three groups: amnesia patients, patients without
amnesia being treated for alcoholism, patients
without amnesia with no history of alcoholism
Procedure
 Participants rated how much they liked each of a
series of words
 Immediately after rating, they completed an explicit
recall test and an implicit word completion test
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25. Results: Research with amnesiac
patients (Graf, Shimamura, & Squire, 1985)
Recall test (explicit)
 As would be expected, patients with amnesia
exhibited much lower explicit recall (15%) than did
other patients (36 – 37%).
Word completion test (implicit)
 All groups, including patients with amnesia,
provided a similar proportion of primed words (apx.
40%) on the word completion test
 These results show that priming can occur in
the absence of explicit recall
Obj 5

26. Evidence for “pure” implicit memory
(Warrington & Weiskrantz, 1968)
 Asked Korsakoff’s patients to
identify incomplete pictures
 Shown more complete
versions until they were able
to identify picture
 Performance improved
even though people did
not remember training
Obj 5

27. Implicit memory
Other priming-related effects
 Advertising (Perfect & Askew, 1994) – participants
ask to scan magazine articles (with no mention
made of ads on facing pages)
 Later, when ask to rate ads (some in magazine, others
not) gave higher ratings to those they had seen
 In subsequent recognition test, people only explicitly
recognized about 12% of the ads they had seen
 Propaganda effect (“seeing is believing”) – people are
more likely to rate statements as true if they have read or
heard them before (political campaigns)
 This effect occurs even if people told that statement is false
at time of first
Key point: Implicit memory demonstrates that events we are not
consciously aware of can influence our behavior
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28. Procedural memory
 Tulving (1985) also
identified a 3rd memory
system - procedural
memory - that contains
our memory for motor
and cognitive skills
(HOW things are done)
 Riding a bike
 Solving a puzzle
 Driving a golf ball
 Mirror drawing
 Neuropsychological
and cognitive support
for a distinct
procedural memory
has been well-
documented
Obj 5

29. Dissociation: Procedural and
episodic – semantic memory
 Illustrates how individual with amnesia functions in “everyday” life
(Brain Mod 18)
 http://www.learner.org/resources/series142.html?pop=yes&pid=1586
 Can remember information from before accident and can “work with
hands”, but cannot form new semantic or episodic memory
 Memories NOT stored in hippocampus; rather, hippocampus serves to
CONSOLIDATE new memories as they are formed
 Introduces the concept of long term potentiation (LTP)
 LTP - an electrical phenomenon that produces long lasting facilitation
of synaptic transmission in affected cells
 Also introduces Hebb’s hypothesis about synaptic change & memory
 Illustrates studies with rats in Morris water maze
 Rats given drugs that block LTP do not remember location of
submerged platform
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30. Classical conditioning
 Eye blink conditioning
 Neutral (e.g., tone) stimulus (CS) consistently presented
prior to UCS (puff of air directed at the cornea), which
automatically elicits blink responses (UR)
 With sufficient CS–US pairings, the CS elicits learned or
“conditioned” eye blink response (CR)
 Outside the lab, a neutral object or event can become a CS
for an emotional reaction (CR) that is similar to the
emotional reaction after an accident (UCS)
 If people are unaware of the reason for the conditioned
emotional reaction, then it is an example of implicit
memory
Key point: Implicit memory demonstrates that events we are not
consciously aware of can influence our behavior
Obj 5

31. Priming, procedural memory, and
conditioning (implicit):
Key points/terms/evidence
 Different tests for
explicit and implicit
memory
 Types of priming
 Ways of avoiding explicit
memory
 Priming research
 Methods
 Results
 Procedural memory
 Classical conditioning

32. Memory Loss at the Movies

33. Memory loss in the movies
 Examples of memory loss
 Psychogenic fugue – traveling away from where person
lives and lack of memory for past, especially personal
information
 Inability to form new long-term memories – problem
similar to that of Clive Wearing, but incorrectly labeled
as loss of short-term memory
 Selective forgetting – occasionally does occur, but, more
frequently, recall of traumatic events intrudes in
memory
 Retrograde amnesia – no memory for events prior to an
accident or injury
 Implicit memory – responding in a certain way to a
person or event without knowing the reason for the
response
 Movies may not portray conditions accurately
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34. Reminder: The next lab:
Levels of Processing
 Complete lab by Tues. 2/26, 9 pm
 Relates to material at the beginning of Chapter 7 (pp. 174-176)
 Task
 In Phase I, make one of three types of judgments (letters,
rhyme, or semantic) for a series of words
 In Phase II, indicate whether you recognized a series of words
(½ presented during judgment task and ½ new words
[“lures”])
 Specific hypotheses (based only on memory test phase) that
we will discuss in class after data analysis (repeated-measures
ANOVA)
 Higher proportion correct for semantic judgment than for
letters
 Higher proportion correct for semantic judgment than for
rhymes
 Higher proportion correct for rhymes than for letters
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