Transcript Notes from Week 8

Week 8 – Memory Development
Exams marks on-line
 Finalize your topic soon!
 Small assignment due November 18th
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Week 8; Memory
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Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model revisited
Information Processing System
(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)
Response : via
recognition or recall
Input from
outside
Storage
Attention
Sensory
Register
Working memory:
holds info for short time;
can do stuff with it
Retrieval
Executive Functions: plan and perform
each step of info processing
Long-term
memory:
Permanent store
of info;
knowledge
about world;
past events;
procedures;
Metaknowledge
Week 8; Memory
Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model revisited
 Long-term memory includes declarative
and procedural memory
 Declarative composed of episodic and
semantic; Focus is on the declarative part
of memory
 Memory is not one thing, and resides in
different areas

Relevant Definitions
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Recall
 Free – straight remembering with no help
 Cued – some kind of “hint” given
Recognition
 Similar to cued recall, but less of a hint
Location memory
 A-not-B
 Spatial
span
Corsi Blocks task
4
1
2
7
3
5
6
9
8
Relevant Definitions
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Recall

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Recognition
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Similar to cued recall, but usually a choice involved
Location memory



Free – straight remembering with no help
Cued – some kind of “hint” given
A-not-B
Spatial span
Context-independent learning

Kinds of tasks usually tapped in lab work
Infantile Amnesia


We don’t tend to have very early memories:
Why?
Vygotsky’s theory
 Learning

with parent’s and teacher’s help
Piaget’s Theory
 Lack
of symbolic thought
 “Cognitive Structures” aren’t in place to develop
memories

Information-Processing
 Can’t
attend efficiently; language allows top-down
processing
 Fuzzy-Trace Theory
Favoured explanations…
Lack of correspondence between
encoding mechanisms and later retrieval
cues
 Brain structures not yet in place
 Lack of sense of self

Memory in Babies
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Was once thought to be impossible
Rovee-Collier and colleagues’ mobile paradigm
Used conditioning paradigm with 2 month olds
3 phases:
 Baseline
(3 minutes)
 Training (9 minutes)
 Retention (after a delay of hours to days)
www.wwnorton.com/psychsci/activity/ch11_activity1.htm
Memory in Babies 2
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Babies as young as 3 months have shown
retention up to 2 weeks
Babies younger than 2 months for shorter times
(a few days)
Context is important in this task
Environment specificity
 Crib
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and room variations
Mobile specificity
 Visual
Pop-out effect
T
T
T
T
P
T
T
P
P
P
P
T
P
P
R
R
R
R
P
R
R
P
P
P
P
R
P
P
Memory in Babies 3

A-not-B task (Diamond)
 Must
impose longer and longer delays to elicit
error with age: related to memory for location

Sequencing of mobiles
 Will
remember 3 mobiles in particular order they
were presented

Deferred Imitation
 Barr,
Vieira, & Rovee-Collier (2001)
 Showed imitation in 6-month-olds
 Showed priming and association memory for this
imitation
Implicit Memory
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Exercise
Complete the word stems
awa___
sno___
dro___
ste___
mon___
cri___
ban___
rec___
cus___
ben___
Implicit Memory
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Exercise
Refers to incidental learning that occurs when
you are not trying to learn
Does not seem to change much over lifespan
 Children
in learning pictures: explicit memories
improve, implicit do not (i.e. always pretty good)
 E.g. habituation / dishabituation
Event Memory
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Script-based memory develops around 3; this is
when children recognize relevant aspects of an
event
They will remember repeated events, rather than
isolated ones
However, more significant events can be
remembered with prompting and questioning
 Liwag
& Stein, 1995
 Burgwyn-Bailes, Baker-Ward, Gordon, & Ornstein,
2001
Source-monitoring
Children have trouble remembering who
said what
 “I did it” bias

 Doll
and dollhouse tasks
Eyewitness Testimony - adults

Adults are bad witnesses!
 Class
e.g.
 Loftus’ work

Adults susceptible to suggestion
 Bransford
& Franks
 Age regression therapy
Spanos, Burgess, Burgess, Samuel, & Blois,
1999
 68/78 participants had false recall, and nearly
half reported very strong memories of the day
after birth

Eyewitness Testimony
Very young children won’t volunteer
information
 Will give info when asked specific
questions
 BUT risk of false information goes up,
esp. in younger kids

 With
age, amount of false info goes down
 Fuzzy-Trace theory

Can be susceptible to suggestion
 Ceci

& Bruck, 1993:
88% preschoolers susceptible to suggestion
 Source-monitoring
is a problem again
 Repeated questioning may lead to false info.
 Design of questions is important

Poole & Lindsay, 1993
Eyewitness, continued
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Young children can acquire false
memories



But must be plausible
Can’t predict one kind of memory from
another
Factors affecting false recall:

Knowledge base
 Characteristics of the interview process
Should we use children as eyewitnesses
given susceptibility?
 Yes, but not under 5

 (although
may be ok younger, depending on
trauma involved)
Suggestions for using Child
Witnesses
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Ask non-leading questions
Limit number of times they are interviewed *
“I don’t remember” is ok
Remain friendly and patient
Avoid family presence if topic is sensitive
Maybe use a videotape of early interview
Avoid props
Factors affecting children’s memory

Knowledge-base
 Older
children always remember more than younger,
even if no structure is imposed: they know more
 If they know more about topic, they will remember
more (applies to young and old)
 The more knowledge they acquire, the more likely
they are to make unlikely connections and remember

Personal Relevance
 Classmates
example
Metamemory
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What children know about memory and memory
processes
3 stages of remembering:
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Diagnosis
Treatment
Monitoring
Very young children overestimate what they know about
the treatment phase, don’t think strategy will help
Children don’t spontaneously use a strategy until they
are 10-12 years old, indicating lack of metamemory
knowledge
Memory-Metamemory Connection
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Could be that improvements in memory retrieval
leads to value placed on strategies, resulting in
increased metamemory knowledge
Maybe increased understanding of memory
leads to strategy usage, and hence better
retrieval
Relationship seems to be an interaction
Lifespan Stability of Memory
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Implicit memory for benign events is in place
quite early, as seen in infant research, and does
not show age-related advances or declines
Strategy use increases with age, indicating that
explicit memory develops, and declines in old
age
Given than memory abilities vary according to
task, seems to be domain-specific ability, with
different abilities developing at different times
Lifespan changes in span

Different span measures elicit different
lifespan patterns (my dissertation )
 Corsi
blocks
 Sequencing span (forward digit for kids)
 Auditory working memory task
Mean scores on span tasks
Age
Corsi
Blocks**
Span**
(Digit* or
Sequencingτ)
Auditory
WM **
5 year olds
(N=31)
5.5
(0.3)
6.9
(1.8)
6.2
(1.4)
10.7
(5.1)
19-24 year olds
(N=32)
21.4
(1.7)
8.2
(1.6)
17.3
(4.7)
30.5
(4.6)
40-45 year olds
(N=33)
42.4
(2.6)
7.3
(1.6)
15.8
(4.3)
29.1
(4.8)
60-65 year olds
(N=32)
62.4
(2.6)
6.8
(1.3)
14.6
(3.9)
26.6
(5.1)
Review Exercise on Memory
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Big name in baby memory with mobiles?
________________
What develops first, scripts or specific events?
Can be created in young children through
repeated questioning_______________
True or false: There is no evidence of agerelated changes in explicit memory.
Which of the following helps retrieval most:
Free recall or cued recall?