Psychology 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Confabulation, Confirmation Bias, Prospective Memory

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Dr.Mike

Document Summary

Brain doesn"t grow new cells to store memories connections between neurons strengthen. Called long-term potentiation, one example of synaptic plasticity. Neurons communicate using electrochemical signals through synapse. Pre-synaptic neurons release neurotransmitters on post-synaptic neurons, allowing na and ca to flow in. Dif in charge between outside and inside is the potential. With repeated stimulation, the same pre-synaptic neuron converts into greater post-synaptic neuron stronger synapse, and when it lasts longer called long-term potentiation. Decay when we don"t encode something well or don"t retrieve it for a while, we can"t at all anymore. Initial rate of forgetting is high but levels off over time: ebbinghaus was first investigator of decay. Found his rate of forgetting very fast, but if he remembered it after initial stage it levelled out. Just because you can"t retrieve something doesn"t mean it"s completely gone relearning. Even if ebbinghaus couldn"t reproduce everything, took less time to learn list second time around. Works with procedural skills too ex.