PSY1EFP Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Anterograde Amnesia, Retrograde Amnesia, Implicit Memory
18 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
EFP Lecture 9 Session 1 – Memory, Thinking & Language (2)
What are the different long-term memory systems?
Long-term memory is composed of multiple systems.
-Scientists do not agree on the number of human long-term
memory systems.
Long-term memories can differ in how they are acquired and how they are
stored and retrieved.
Explicit Memory Involves conscious effort
Fundamental differences exist among episodic and semantic
memory, explicit and implicit memory, and prospective memory.
-Implicit memory: the system underlying unconscious memories
-Explicit memory: the system underlying conscious memories
-Declarative memory : the cognitive information retrieved from explicit memory; knowledge that can be declared
Episodic memory: memory for one’s personal past experiences
Semantic memory: memory for knowledge about the world
- Evidence that episodic and semantic systems of explicit memory are separate can be found in cases of brain
injury in which semantic memory is intact even though episodic memory is impaired (H.M.).
Implicit Memory occurs without deliberate effort
Implicit memory consists of memories that exist without our awareness of them and that do not require conscious
attention.
-Classical conditioning
Procedural (motor) memory: a type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioural habits
- Coordinating muscle movements to ride a bicycle
-Jacoby’s false fame effect demonstrated how our implicit formation of attitudes can affect our beliefs about
people.
Prospective Memory is remembering to do something
Prospective memory: remembering to do something at some future time
-Remembering to do something takes up valuable cognitive resources and reduces the number of items we can
deal with in working memory or the number of things we can attend to.
-Without a retrieval cue, remembering requires conscious effort.
When does memory fail?
Forgetting is the inability to retrieve memory from long-term storage.
-The ability to forget is as important as the ability to remember.
-What would life be like if you could not forget?
-Normal forgetting helps us remember and use important information.
-Ebbinghaus’s methods of savings provided compelling evidence that forgetting occurs rapidly over the first few
days but then levels off.
Schacter identified what he calls the seven sins of memory.
-Transience, blocking, absentmindedness, and persistence are related to forgetting and remembering.
-Misattribution, suggestibility, and bias are distortions of memory.
Transience is caused by interference
Transience: forgetting over time
-Proactive interference: interference that occurs when prior information inhibits the ability to remember new
information
Retroactive interference: interference that occurs when new information inhibits the ability to remember old
information
Inefficiencies of Memory Processing
Blocking: the temporary inability to remember something
-The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
-Blocking often occurs because of interference from words that are similar in some way, such as in sound or
meaning, and that recur.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Absentmindedness: the inattentive or shallow encoding of events
-During most of our daily activities we are consciously aware of only a small portion of both our thoughts and our
behaviours.
Amnesia is a deficit in a long-term memory
Amnesia: a deficit in long-term memory— resulting from disease, brain injury, or psychological trauma—in which the
individual loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information.
-This type of memory loss is not one of Schacter’s seven sins.
Retrograde amnesia: a condition in which people lose past memories, such as memories for events, facts, people, or
even personal information
Anterograde amnesia: a condition in which people lose the ability to form new memories
-H.M. had a classic case of anterograde amnesia; he could remember old information, but after his surgery he lost
the ability to form new memories.
Persistence is unwanted remembering
Persistence: the continual recurrence of unwanted memories
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health problem, with an estimated prevalence of 7 percent in
the United States.
-The most common triggers of PTSD include events that threaten people themselves or those close to them.
-Emotional events are associated with amygdala activity, which might underlie the persistence of certain
memories.
Contemporary researchers are investigating methods to erase unwanted memories.
-The drug propranolol
-Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDAC inhibitors, HDIs) are a class of compounds that interfere with the function
of histone deacetylase.
-Although these methods have not been used yet with humans, HDAC inhibition shows promise in the treatment
of enduring trauma.
People reconstruct events to be consistent
People tend to recall their past beliefs and past attitudes as being consistent with their current ones.
-Memory bias: the changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs or
attitudes
-Groups’ collective memories can seriously distort the past.
-Most societies’ official histories tend to downplay their past behaviours that were unsavoury, immoral, or
murderous.
Flashbulb Memories can be wrong
Flashbulb memories: vivid episodic memories for circumstances in which people first learned of a surprising,
consequential, or emotionally arousing event
Flashbulb memories can also be biased and inaccurate.
-For example, studies of the 9/11 and Boston Marathon attacks found diminished recall several years later.
Any event that produces a strong emotional response is likely to produce a vivid, although not necessarily accurate,
memory.
-Von Restorff effect: A distinctive event may be recalled more easily than a trivial event, however inaccurate the
result.
People make source Misattributions
Source misattribution: memory distortion that occurs when people misremember the time, place, person, or
circumstances involved with a memory.
-False fame effect: an effect that causes people to mistakenly believe that someone is famous simply because
they have encountered the person’s name before
-Sleeper effect: An argument initially may not be very persuasive because it comes from a questionable source,
but may become more persuasive over time
Source amnesia: a type of amnesia that occurs when a person shows memory for an event but cannot remember
where he or she encountered the information
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Efp lecture 9 session 1 memory, thinking & language (2) Scientists do not agree on the number of human long-term memory systems. Long-term memories can differ in how they are acquired and how stored and retrieved. Fundamental differences exist among episodic and semantic memory, explicit and implicit memory, and prospective memory. Declarative memory : the cognitive information retrieved from explicit memory; knowledge that can be declared. Episodic memory: memory for one"s personal past experiences. Semantic memory: memory for knowledge about the world. Evidence that episodic and semantic systems of explicit memory are separate can be found in cases of brain injury in which semantic memory is intact even though episodic memory is impaired (h. m. ). Implicit memory consists of memories that exist without our awareness of them and that do not require conscious attention. Procedural (motor) memory: a type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioural habits.
