Exam 6: Section 3: Memory

The standard stage model of memory has three distinct memory components: the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive.

Josh is sent to the store by his mother to pick up a number of grocery items. Upon arriving home, Josh's mother notices that Josh remembered to buy the first few items but apparently forgot to get the last few items that she had mentioned to him. Remembering the first items in a list is called the primacy effect.

Working memory provides temporary storage for information that is currently being used in some conscious cognitive activity.

After many years of research, Karl Lashley concluded that memories were distributed throughout the brain rather than stored in a particular area.

The anterograde amnesia experienced by H.M. was the result of surgery that removed H.M.'s hippocampus.

A process called long-term potentiation strengthens the connections among neurons in a particular memory circuit, allowing them to communicate more easily.

The hippocampus and medial temporal lobe transfer newly encoded memories to long-term memory.

Some sensory neurons that are involved with the initial perception of a stimulus are later reactivated when the memory of the stimulus is recalled.

In the "professor's office" study, many participants erroneously remembered objects that were not in the office but that did fit their schema of a typical professor's office.

In a cross-cultural study investigating first memories, Chinese and Taiwanese college students usually reported first memories focusing on routine activities that they shared with members of their family or social group.

Unique, different, or unusual events are easier to retrieve from memory because they are characterized by a high degree of distinctiveness.

Visual sensory memory only lasts for about half a second while auditory sensory memory lasts for a few seconds.

Karl Lashley originally believed that the engram, or memory trace, was stored in a particular area of the brain.

Every new memory that a person forms is actively constructed rather than simply recorded.

Although there is ample evidence that information in long-term memory is clustered and associated, memory researchers still do not completely understand how information is organized in long-term memory.

Sensory memory is also called working memory.

Retrieval cue failure is experienced when particular information is no longer stored in long-term memory.

George Miller's classic experiment suggested that short-term memory has a capacity of about seven bits of information, plus or minus two.

The maximum duration of short-term memory is about 20 seconds, unless the information is actively rehearsed.

It is estimated that about 5.4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease and that number is expected to dramatically escalate as the first of the "baby boomers" are now reaching age 65.