PS261 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Synapse, Interference Theory, Retrograde Amnesia
Document Summary
Forgetting can reduce context specificity of learning and thereby permit learned behaviour to occur in a broader range of situations. Forgetting is not always the loss of information, could be retrieval failure. Proactive: interfering info acts forward to disrupt memory of a future target vent. Retroactive interference: memory for something is disrupted by subsequent exposure to competing info, interfering stimulus acts backwards to disrupt memory of a preceding target event. Retrograde amnesia: forgetting events that occurred close to the accident, the farther back you go the better the memory. Extinction memory is at first malleable and subject to modification. Transformation of memory from flexible state to stable state is called memory consolidation. When stimulus is first encountered it enters temporary, short term memory store where it is vulnerable and can be lost bc of interfering stimuli or neurophysiological disturbances (consolidation failure) Retrieval failure view assumes amnesia can be reversed if proper procedure is found to reactivate memory.
