Chapter Six
Question One
Semantic coding entails information representation based on its meaning. Information in the long-term and short-term memory is therefore stored in terms of its specific meaning. However, data in long-term memory is mostly coded semantically. We can conclude that memory is determined through the primacy and recency effect. In primacy, memory stimuli are present at the start, while recency is the end in case of a list. Semantic coding in long-term memory is well demonstrated in Sach’s experiment, which was conducted to determine one’s ability to recognize specific words concerning their general meaning.
Question Two
Autobiographical memory contains memories for explicit experiences in our own life. These can comprise episodic as well as semantic components. An autobiographical memory may consist of details from a party such as the people who attended, which would be part of the episodic memory. Still, it also includes knowledge about the party, which is a semantic component of memory. The primacy effect shows how info that is rehearsed (bc at the beginning of the list) is more likely to be transferred to LTM. Recency effect shows the most recent items are still in STM, and that’s why they are remembered. When subjects repeated words aloud in 5-sec intervals b/w words, the words at the beginning were repeated more, so more likely to get to LTM (primacy). When subjects had to count backward and then recall, recency was eliminated bc no longer in STM and no rehearsal.
Question Three
Loss of memory, amnesia, is regarded as abnormal forgetfulness. A person may be incapable of recalling single or multiple past memories or even recent events and sometimes both. Movies, for example, The Vow, have depicted precise instances of .loss of memory. In The Vow, an exact situation of a husband of a woman was described who, after getting involved in a car accident, lost a lot of his memory concerning his romantic association with his wife. This made him act to her as a stranger, ultimately. Elizabeth Loftus experimented in the ’70s, where she included pictures of an event that did not occur. When she showed the images to subjects, those in the MPI group tended to say that what was in the picture happened, even though it did not.
Chapter Seven
Question One
Elaborative rehearsal utilizes connections as well as meanings to enable the transfer of data to long-term memory. It involves the act of thinking meaning and linking it to a piece of prior knowledge. In contrast, maintenance rehearsal is the stimuli repetition which maintains info without transferring it to long-term memory. Therefore, while elaborative rehearsal focus is on deep information processing, maintenance rehearsal comprises shallow processing depicting less attention to the meaning.
Question Two
Encoding specificity involves learning information plus its context. Therefore, the principle posits that there is easy retrieval of memory in a human being in the presence of an identical external condition during memory storage. Godden, Grant, and Baddeley studied context cues’ influence on recall, especially on encoding specificity in their diving and studying research. The diving experiment involved word list with two sets of groups, one studying the words underwater and the other on land. Grant experiment involved reading on psychoimmunology as one wears headphones under two backgrounds, one quiet and the other noisy. The recalling was best when retrieval, as well as encoding, took place within the same location. Contextual learning was evidenced in circumstances where retrieval was amplified by the provision of similar conditions for both encoding and retrieval.
Question Three
The idea is that memory, as well as learning, is present within the brain through physiological changes that occur at the synapse. Thus, a consolidation process that transforms any new memory from a fragile state can be interrupted to an advanced permanent form in which it’s resistant to interruptions. Considering the dynamic nature of memory, with time, people forget a lot of details or information they have experienced or learned. The supporting evidence is that Hebb anticipated that changes occurring synapses happens to be activated in about the same period by a given experience offer neural-record of that experience.
Chapter Eight
Question One
Emotions, as well as memories, are interlinked. Memories that are most memorable happen to be those that evoked a lot of intense emotional reactions to an individual. Evidence that emotionally charged events are more associated with non-emotional events is that when presented with a list of words that were arousing versus a list of normal, we saw that participants remembered the emotional or arousing words better and that the amygdala was involved in processing them. B.P. had brain damage to the amygdala did not have increased emotional involvement in memories where control patients did. It thus correct to say that emotionally arousing occurrence is perceived as vital and also life-altering to a person and hence seen as the often unforgettable occasions.
Question Two
Source monitoring can be defined as the primary memory information for a given event, which includes perceptual and emotional experiences as well as thoughts that occurred at the time-Bartlett’s “war of ghosts” experiment. The source monitoring errors are the omissions as well as inaccuracies in the attempt to recall. It is reduced by repeated reproduction. The constructive state of source monitoring and source monitoring errors can be considered to stem from the moment we need to retrieve a particular memory. One must decide the origin of the memory. The war of the ghost experiment reveals the above argument since the time the participant was asked to recall a given story; they were seen to omit various information; however, they had a central point with them. An example is an attempt to make a story consistent with one’s culture. Memories contain details from different sources, which encompasses a phenomenon called source monitoring, which is the central focus of a constructive memory approach.