Course Overview

Knowledge

- Different types of knowledge (visual K, language, categories)

ch. 3: Vision. How are objects recognized? -It looks easy but it’s not

Ch. 6-11: Memory- to know is to remember

The Brain

Acquisition(perception)

ch.4: Attention. -Filters perceptual input

ch. 5: Working Memory - Buffer for mental representations

Use

- Deficits & Errors

Ch. 12-14: Reasoning

- inductive - deductive

Problem Solving

Emotion

Ch 4:Executive Functions

Memory Processes

• Attention• Rehearsal, Elaboration, etc.• Encoding• Retrieval

SensoryMemory

Short-termWorkingMemory

Long-termMemory

Model of Memory

SensoryMemory

EpisodicMemory

CentralExec.

Visual

Auditory

ProceduralMemory

SemanticMemory

FILTER

Declarative

SemanticMemory

EpisodicMemory

Types of Knowledge (memory)

Procedural

The distinction emphasized by the declarative/procedural model is in terms of the kind of information being represented (i.e. knowledge that can be reported verbally vs motor skills).

Affected by Amnesia

2+2, sun is blue The Eagles won; ‘cook’ was a word in the list

‘Of two men with the same outward experiences and the same amount of mere native tenacity, the one who thinks over his experiences the most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory’

William James, 1890

Moving information from Working Memory to Long Term Memory

• Maintenance rehearsal (e.g. phone number):

– rote mechanical process

– requires little effort, but

– effective only for short-term retention (Craik & Watkins, 1973)

• Elaborative rehearsal (e.g. exam; phone of cute guy): – Semantic processing & relations to background knowledge

– requires effort, but

– leads to better long-term retention

Maintenance rehearsal is ineffective for long-term retention (Craik & Watkins, 1973)

• Task: – Listen to a list of words. – name the last word that started with the letter ‘b’– E.g., ...book, river, chair, brandy, textile. --> ‘brandy’

• This task encourages a maintenance rehearsal strategy (why?)

• Variable amount of rehearsal for each ‘b’ word:– … crook, basket, spoon, baby, ocean …

–

– … sauce, bride, table, airplane, giraffe, truck, carrot, barber... ‘basket, basket’

‘bride, bride, bride, bride, bride, bride’

‘baby, baby, …’

• At the end of experiment: surprise memory task (recall ‘b’ words)

brid

e

bask

et

Lincoln penny (Nickerson &Adams, 1979)

(medin p.272)

Encoding information in Long-Term Memory

• Intention to learn – Incidental Learning: No warning about future recall task – Intentional Learning: “You will be have to recall these words”

• Level of processing – Shallow: ‘Are the two words...

• of the same color?

• in the same screen location?

• written in same case? (HOUSE-trick)

– Medium: ‘Do the two words rhyme?’

– Deep (meaningful): ‘Are the two words synonymous?’

• Results– Main effect of Intention to learn? (intentional vs. incidental)

– Main effect of Level of Processing? (shallow, medium, deep)

– Interaction?

• Intuition: intentional learning should be best

• Results: incidental is as good as intentional learning

• How do we reconcile these opposing views? – Intention to learn acts indirectly, biasing attention toward effortful, deep,

semantic processing (that is, toward the meaning of stimulus)

– Attention to meaning promotes understanding, helping to ‘see’ the connections between the to-be-remembered item and background knowledge

– These connections

• serve as distinctive cues for retrieval

• provide ‘retrieval paths’

Encoding RetrievalRetention

- Distinctiveness (encoding of differences among items)

Memory Stages:

Memory is enhanced by:

Elephant

Deep Processing Encoding

animal

trunkBig ears

gray large

AfricaSemanticKnowledge

dogcat

Recall stage:

Distinctiveness

- These distinctive semantic cues (trunk, animal, large, etc.) point to a single specific target

- Other semantic cues (bark, pet, hunt, fido) would to other targets (‘dog’)

Shallow Processing: (e.g., count number of ‘e’s in each word)

Elephant

animal

trunkBig ears

gray large

AfricaSemanticKnowledge

dogcat

pet

category

sexual

one ‘e’

Recall stage: - The cue “the target has one ‘e’” is not distinctive enough

Encoding RetrievalRetention

- Distinctiveness (encoding of differences among items)

- Organization (grouping items into categories)

Memory Stages:

Memory is enhanced by:

• Examples– California Verbal Learning Task (CVLT)

– In one minute, name as many (states/animals) as you can (Retrieval Plan)

• Organization– reduces amount of information encoded (chunks)

– provides ‘retrieval paths’ that make the memory ‘findable’

– It is most effective for recall tasks (less effective for immediate recognition tasks)

Organization: Grouping items into categories

• In sum, long-term retention is enhanced by

– Distinctiveness:

• Encoding of differences among items

– Organization:

• Encoding of similarities among items

– Both distinctiveness and organization are maximized by semantic processes (deep processing)

• Evidence

– Two types of word pairs: • related (beer-wine)• unrelated (table-dog)

– Two encoding conditions:• Group A: ‘list similarities between the two items’?• Group B: ‘list differences between the two items’?

– Results in a surprised recall task• Listing similarities favors recall unrelated words• Listing differences favors recall of related words

Some factors that enhance long-term memory

• Understanding (semantic organization):– reduces amount of information encoded

– provides ‘retrieval paths’ • Other factors related to semantic processes

– Background knowledge (better chance of understanding)

– Semantic elaboration:• The fat man read the sign vs. • The fat man read the sign warning about thin ice

• Metacognition:– Memory strategy:

• maintenance vs. elaborative rehearsal• Shallow vs. deep processing

– Subjective organization of to-be-remembered items

– Response criterion: When to volunteer an answer

Other factors that enhance long-term memory

• Encoding specificity

• Spacing

• Emotion

Encoding RetrievalRetention

Memory Stages:

Retrieval: Example

• What did you do in the morning of on November 26, 2003?

• Cue: Nov 26 was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day• Remembering starts at the general level (‘words in the list’, ‘morning of

thanksgiving day’) and from there proceeds to finer discriminations

• Memory Cues have a dual function:– They narrow the set of alternatives to sample (distinctiveness)– They activate associated items (retrieval path)

Retrieval: A two-stage process

• Step 1: Generate (activate items related to the cue)– Match current content of your experience to similar contents in your memory

• For example, think about the question asked, hopefully it will have content related to the answer OR

– Retrieve associated information (source memory)

• For example, think about other things related to that day (where were you?). Hopefully it will bring associated memories to mind

• Step 2: Recognition – Decide whether the activated items are correct or not

• Recognition tasks are easier than recall tasks because they do not require the generation stage.

Spreading activation and associative strength • Activation:

– Long-Term Memory representation raises to the level of Working Memory (consciousness)

• Associative Strength:– Learning about the material in different ways creates multiple connections– Some connections are stronger than others (table-chair, table-book)

• Spread of Activation:– Once the representation is above certain threshold, it spreads its activation to associated

representations– Fan effect (example)

• Hints:– Contextual information spreads activation to the target

• Many of these ideas are similar to how the interactive models explain the word superiority effect (McClelland & Rumelhart)

Encoding Specificity (State-Dependent Learning)

• Memory retrieval is enhanced under conditions similar to the conditions at encoding.(context)

•

When the context for retrieval is the same as for encoding (e.g., land-land), the contextual cues activate the memory nodes, enhancing performance.

You enter the room were you left the keys, and all of a sudden you remember where you put them

Another example:- Encoding: ‘attend to sound’ vs. ‘attend to meaning’ - Recall: ‘sound hint’ vs. ‘semantic’ hint

- Level of processing Effect: meaning better than sound- Similar State effect: ‘meaning-meaning’ better than ‘meaning-sound’ ‘sound-sound’ better than ‘sound-meaning’

Effect of Encoding-Retrieval Similarity

• Encoding Instructions:– Recognition (‘The exam will be multiple choice’) – Recall (‘The exam will be essay format’)

• Test Conditions– Recognition (which words were in the list: ‘golf, table, parrot…’ etc.)

– Recall: name all the words in the list

• Design (?)• Predicted results: main effect/s?interaction?

(Tversky, 1973)

• When told to expect a ‘recall’ test– Participants encode items using:

• Elaborative rehearsal (deep processing) that emphasizes– relation to other knowledge and to context

– At recall, participants use such knowledge and context:• To activate the target memories (path retrieval)• To experience ‘source memory’ (episodic memory):

– the memory for the setting in which the material was first encoded (where, when, who said it, what the place looked like, etc.)

– In surprise recognition test:• Retrieval is not needed, thus context information is not useful

• When told to expect a ‘recognition’ test, or not told about memory test at all– Participants encode items using:

• maintenance rehearsal (shallow processing) that provides only– Sense of familiarity

– At recognition, participants use such sense of familiarity:• To recognize which items are old and which are new

– In surprise recall test:• Context information is not available to guide the retrieval path

• Supporting evidence for the role of familiarity in recognition– Unusual words (okapi) are better recognized than familiar words (cat)

– Familiar words are better recalled than unusual ones (more cues)

Declarative

SemanticMemory

EpisodicMemory

Types of Knowledge (memory)

Procedural

This distinction emphasizes the kind of information represented (i.e. knowledge reported verbally vs motor skills).

Affected by Amnesia

2+2, sun is blue The Eagles won; ‘cook’ was a word in the list

Memory Systems

Explicit Memory

Implicit Memory

SemanticMemory

EpisodicMemory

Priming

ClassicalConditioning

Skill & HabitLearning

Another Possible architecture of:

Affected by Amnesia

This emphasizes how information is accessed (conscious vs automatic)

2+2, sun is blue

Implicit Memory• Perceptual priming

– Tachitoscopic recognition (read the word):

• xxxx --> Scone Accuracy

• Scone --> Scone

– Lexical Decision (is this a word?): • xxxx --> Star RT

• Star ---> Star

– Word-stem completion• xxxx --> Sco__

Choice

• Scone --> Sco__

• Perceptual priming is modality specific

• Conceptual priming (of ideas) is amodal

Is perceptual priming a process independent from explicit memory?

• Behavioral dissociation• Anatomical dissociation

– Brain lesion

– Brain imaging (we won’t discuss in this course)

Behavioral Dissociation

• Study Stage– Read aloud - Alone xxx- Cold ‘cold’

– Read aloud - Context Hot- Cold ‘cold’

– Generate Hot ____ ‘cold’

Perceptual Semantic

Process

Explicit recognition (‘was this item in the list?’): semantic benefit

Perceptual process: high low

Semantic process: low high

Tachitoscopic identification cold: ??

Explicit Memory(recognition)Explicit Memory(recognition)

Explicit recognition (‘was this item in the list?’): semantic benefit

Perceptual process: high low

Semantic process: low high

Tachitoscopic identification cold: Double Dissociation from explicit recognition

Is perceptual priming a process independent from explicit memory?

• Behavioral dissociation• Anatomical dissociation

– Brain lesion

Brief detour on Amnesia

Anterograde: events since brain trauma

Retrograde: events prior to brain trauma

(Hippocampus)

Anterograde amnesia: Inability to remember eventsoccurring after brain injury. (Patient H.M.)

Neurological Evidence

Bitemporal Lobectomy

- Performed as treatment for epileptic seizures

- “Success” except for anterograde amnesia

Patient H.M.* had such a surgery in 1953 (age 29)* normal IQ, digit span, conversation, motor learning

Priming in anterograde amnesia • Amnesics show;

– Normal repetition priming – Normal word-stem completion

• Study phase: “is this word pleasant or not?

• Test phase:– Recognition [Was “scorch” on study list?] or– Word Stem Completion: Complete “sco_ _ _”

• Impaired recognition but normal stem completion (i.e., as

likely as normals to complete stems with words that were observed earlier).

(Graf, Squire, & Mandler, 1984)

How to distinguish amnesia from malingering?

• Read word list

• Administer implicit memory test after short delay

• Amnesic:

– poor explicit memory

– Good implicit memory

– Results: better than chance performance

• Malingerer: notices relation to study list– Pretends chance performance

Conceptual Fluency and Source Monitoring

• Judgment of fame – Study phase: ‘read names’

• Alonso, Compaired, DeSalvo, Bueres

– Test phase: ‘how famous is this person’

• Three conditions: – famous (Pacino), – Non-famous Old (Compaired)

– Non-famous New (Chiesa)

• Two test times (between-subjects design):

– Immediately after reading the list– Day after reading the list

– Results• Immediate: Correct rejection (familiarity with good source monitoring)

• Day after: False familiarity (loss of source memory)

Conceptual fluency and Source Monitoring - II

• Judgment of truth (was Saddam Hussein linked to 9/11?)

– Today: sense of familiarity + source memory --> rejection– In a few years:

• still have sense of familiarity, but • no source memory• --> sure the bastard did it!

• Misattribution of source– You watch an assault (staged)– Two days later, you are shown ‘potential’ suspects (innocent bystanders)– Four days later, you are asked to identify the criminal – The innocent bystander looks familiar, you point to him (busted!)

• Summary:– Source attribution is an inferential process– Confidence of judgment is not predictive of accuracy

Autobiographical memory

• Not in your handout• A type of episodic memory• Memory for personal experiences\• Components

• Imagery (e.g., visual imagery)• Lots of detail (flashbulb memory: where were you on 9/11?)

• High confidence in its accuracy (even if it is wrong!)• Emotion• It has a narrative (it tells a story), thus• It is constructive

– is biased by goals at the time of retrieval