Overview of Long-Term Memory
What is encoding?
refers to how you process information and represent it in your memory.
Hypothesis of Craik and Lockhart's (1972) paper
deeper levels of processing during encoding could produce better recall.
recall tasks = the participants must reproduce the items they learned earlier
recognition task = the participants must judge whether they saw a particular item at an earlier time
A ______ consists of your general knowledge or expectation, which is distilled from your past experiences with someone or something.
Schema
_________ is when you identify members of your own ethnic group than members of another ethnic group.
own-ethnicity bias
____________ refers to your knowledge on how to do something.
procedural memory
define distinctiveness and give an example...
a stimulus is different from other memory traces.
for example, to remember somebody's name. must use deep processing and spend extra time processing their name.
list important characteristics of autobiographical memory - 3 parts
1. sometimes we make errors, but memory is often accurate for a variety of information
2. when people make mistakes, these mistakes generally concern peripheral details and specific information about common place events, rather than central information about important events.
3. our memories often blend together information from a variety of courses; we actively construct a unified memory at the time of retrieval.
what is flashbulb memory?
refers to your memory for the circumstances in which you first learned about a very surprising and emotionally arousing event
TRUE OR FALSE: Psychologists define emotion as a general and everlasting experience. In contrast, mood is a reaction to a specific stimulus.
FALSE; psychologists define emotion as a reaction to a specific stimulus. Whereas, mood refers to a more general, long-lasting experience.
name two aspects of long-term memory and describe how they differ.
encoding = you process information and represent it in your memory
retrieval = you locate information in storage, and you access that information
what did Symons and Johnson (1997) perform in their self-reference effect in their research?
meta-analysis
define autobiographical memory
your memory for events and issues related to yourself
what did Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested about flashbulb memory?
people's flashbulb memories are more accurate than memories of less surprising events. However, studies have shown people make numerous errors in recalling details of national events, even though they claim their memory for these events was vivid.
1. people may create memories that are consistent with their schemas
2. people may make errors in source monitoring
3. post-event misinformation may distort people's recall
What does the level-of-processing predict?
your recall will be more accurate when you use a deep level of processing, in terms of meaning.
what does elaboration require?
rich processing in terms of meaning and interconnected concepts.
people with amnesia have severe deficits in their episodic memory. what is the most common source of amnesia?
brain damage (trauma to head, stroke, neurological disease, etc.)
define positivity effect
when people rate unpleasant past events more positively with the passage of time
what does the constructivist approach to memory emphasize?
we construct knowledge by integrating new information with what we know
TRUE OR FALSE: Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart wrote an extremely influential article about how we encode information. This levels-of-processing approach argues that deep, meaningful processing of information leads to more accurate recall than shallow, sensory kinds of processing.
TRUE
Why should re recall information especially when we apply it to ourselves? 3 factors
1. the "self" produces a rich set of cues.
2. self-reference instructions encourage people to consider how their personal traits are connected with one another.
3. you rehearse material more frequently if it is associated with yourself.
name two types of amnesia and the differences
retrograde amnesia = loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain damage
anterograde amnesia = loss of ability to form memories for events that occurred after brain damage
recovered-memory perspective = when you forget about a memory (trauma) for years and then you automatically remember years later (adulthood)
false-memory perspective = when people recover memories, but its incorrect
What does the Pollyanna Principle state?
pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently and more accurately than less-pleasant items