Long-Term Memory: Episodic

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Long-Term Memory Episodic

• Kimberley Clow
• kclow2_at_uwo.ca
• http//instruct.uwo.ca/psychology/130/

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Outline

• What is Episodic Memory?
• Autobiographical Memory
• Ebbinghaus
• Memory Stages
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Interactions Between Stages
• Depth of Processing
• Strategies

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Recap

• This is the mental model of memory that has
  developed over the last few lectures

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Long-Term Memory
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Examples

• What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
• What was the first university class you attended?
  
• What was the name of your fourth grade teacher?
• What was the name of your first best-friend?
• What colour was your bedroom when you were 6
  years old?

• Leftovers from thanksgiving dinner
• The history of theatre
• Ms. Jarvis
• Richie
• Blue

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Autobiographical Memory

• Primarily interpretations about an event
• Information about
• the location of an event
• temporal information about the date of occurrence
  of an event
• the actors, actions, and locations
• context-specific sensory and perceptual
  attributes
• imagery
• Contains the experience of remembering
• Duration of the memory can last for years

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Types

• Personal Memory
• image-based representation of a single unrepeated
  event
• Autobiographical Fact
• identical to personal memory, except that the
  memory is not image-based
• Generic Personal Memory
• similar to personal memory, except that the event
  is repeated or a series of similar events occur
  and are represented in a more abstract form

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Accuracy

• "Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to
  truth, but not its twin
• Barbara Kingsolver
• Accuracy of autobiographical memories
• Factual information
• .88 correlation among family members
• Emotions and attitudes
• .43 correlation among family members

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What Memory System?
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Ebbinghaus
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Criticism

• He excluded meaning from the stimuli
• We have a great tendency to impose meaning even
  on the most meaningless stimuli
• e.g., mentally turning BEF into BEEF
• If memory is studied in absence of meaning, can
  this tell us how memory normally functions?
• When we do have access to meaning
• When do we use mnemonics and other strategies?

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Stages of Memory

• Three different stages of processing
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Recollecting episodic memories is determined by
  the interaction of encoding and retrieval
  processes
• How we input material will determine how well we
  can output it

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Encoding

• Depth of Processing
• Shallow processing
• Physical features
• Deep processing
• Meaning
• Memory is affected by the way information is
  encoded
• Not just whether it is in the system
• How was it encoded into the system?

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Experimental Evidence

• Study Phase
• Visual
• Does the word contain a letter E?
• Phonemic
• Does the word rhyme with train?
• Semantic
• Is it a type of animal?
• Test Phase

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Not Just the Kind of Processing

• Manipulation of sentence contexts
• Target TOMATO
• Simple
• She cooked the
• Medium
• The ripe tasted delicious
• Complex
• The small lady angrily picked up the red

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Criticisms

• Circular Arguments
• Deep vs. shallow not well defined
• If result is good memory ?processing must have
  been deep instead of shallow
• Recall vs. Recognition
• Doesnt explain why some codes are better than
  others
• Why difference for yes vs. no response?
• Doesnt explain context effects

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Encoding Specificity

• Study word pairs
• Encode based either on meaning or sound
• Meaning
• Is the target related to the word CAT?
• Sound
• Does the target rhyme with the word CAT?

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Context Effects
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Two Types of Context

• Intrinsic context
• Has direct impact on the meaning of the
  to-be-remembered item
• strawberry-JAM vs. traffic-JAM
• Extrinsic context
• Situation has indirect effect on the
  to-be-remembered item
• Mood and state dependent learning
• learn words on land or 20 ft under water

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Cautionary Note!

• Change of environmental context affected recall,
  but not recognition

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• Encoding specificity may more generally be
  thought of as transfer-appropriate processing
• Transfer-Appropriate Processing
• memory performance is determined by the degree of
  similarity between the cognitive operations
  performed at encoding and those performed at
  retrieval

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When Episodic Memory Fails
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Encoding Strategies

• Rehearsal
• Type I
• Type II
• Mnemonics
• Single Use
• Multiple Use
• Organization
• Imagery

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Mnemonics

• Three principles
• Material to-be-learned is structured and
  integrated into a preexisting memory framework
• Material to be remembered must be practiced to
  form distinctive traces
• Mnemonic device can be used for both encoding and
  retrieval by providing effective cues

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Single Use Mnemonics

• Acronyms
• ROY G. BIV
• Rhymes
• i before e, except after c
• Phrases
• Spring forward, fall back
• Never Eat Shredded Wheat
• My Very Earnest Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas
• Personal Meaning
• My student Kate reminds me of Kate Blanchet
  playing Galadriel

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Multiple Use Mnemonics

• The Method of Loci
• Dates back to Ancient Greece.

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• Peg-Word Technique
• Taking advantage of pre-existing associations
• This old man, he played one

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Imagery

• Many mnemonics use visual imagery
• Do the method of loci and peg words work because
  of their visual basis?
• Imagery aids learning
• Deeper encoding?
• Better storage?
• Easier retrieval?

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Retrieval

• Types of tasks used to test retrieval
• Relearning Task
• Ebbinghaus
• Paired-Associate Learning
• Recall
• Free recall
• Serial recall
• Cued recall
• Recognition

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Paired-Associate Learning Task
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Forgetting

• Reasons for Forgetting
• Decay
• Interference
• Retrieval Failure
• Important Terms
• Availability
• Accessibility

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Availability vs. Accessibility

• Two groups studied same list of 48 items
• Items were preceded by the appropriate name of
  the category
• Participants were told that they only had to
  remember the items themselves
• At recall one group free recall, the other group
  cued recall
• Results
• Free recall group 40 percent
• Cued recall group 62 percent
• So information can be available but not accessible

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Other Influences
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And

• Targets presented with weakly associated cue
• glue-CHAIR
• When asked to RECOGNIZE
• if target is in a new context recognition may
  fail
• fail to recognize table-CHAIR
• When given cued RECALL with original associate
  cue, now successfully remember
• glue-?
• New associate better cue for remembering item
  than the item itself!
• Dont remember chair when they see chair with
  table, but can recall chair when they only see
  glue

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Dissociation?

• Patient H.M.
• Episodic semantic memory prior to surgery
  intact, but cannot form new memories
• Patient E.D.
• Semantic memory is impaired yet episodic memory
  for the same period is intact
• Patient K.C.
• Episodic memory processes disrupted, but semantic
  memory processes in tact