Psychology 2135A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Temporal Lobe, Power Law, Sequence Learning

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2135A/B
• Professor: John Paul Minda

Document Summary

An early study on the role of the temporal cortex in memory provided evidence that forgotten memories are still there even if we can"t retrieve them. An experiment by nelson (1971) showed this. Participants were tested on it until they could recall all the items without error. Participants returned for a retest 2 weeks later and were able to recall 75% of them. Participants were given new trials on the 20 paired associates. The ones they missed were either the same or changed and were tested on this after looking it over once. The process by which memories become less available are extremely regular and psychologists have studied their mathematical form. However the memory loss is negatively accelerated the rate of change gets smaller and smaller as the delay increases. Wixeted and ebbesen (1991) concluded that retention functions are generally power functions. This final drop is probably related to physiological deterioration in old age.