Memory Concepts
I. Learning and Memory: Basic Definitions
1. What is learning?
a. Process of which new information is acquired for storage
2. What are the properties of learning?
a. Initiated by experience
b. Selects information that enters into memory
3. Fill in the blank: learning is like a
a. Filter
4. What is memory?
a. Information extracted from experience and stored for later recovery/use
5. What are the properties of memory?
a. It persists after the remembered experience ends
b. It can enter a latent state before being activated by a retrieval process
c. The content of memory reflects the experience that created it
6. T/F: Short term memory isn’t considered real memory because it does not
endure beyond experience
a. False; it only endures for seconds but those seconds count
7. What is a latent state?
a. The stored form of a memory; long term memories must be in this state
so that they can endure
8. T/F: Learning and Memory are directly observed so no explanatory power is
needed.
a. False- they are inferred; explanatory power is crucial
9. How do psychologists study learning and memory?
a. Systematically vary experience
b. Monitor for later changes in behavior that vary with differences
in experience
c. Draw data based inferences about the intervening learning and memory
process that connect the two
10. How do neuroscientists study learning and memory?
a. Manipulate the brain, observe behavioral changes
b. Vary experience and observe behavioral changes in the brain
11. What is the engram and what is its significance in learning and memory?
a. The neurobiological representation of stored information
○ Memory
b. The process by which engrams are formed or encoded
○ Learning
12. What does behavioral neuroscience aim to understand?
, a. Brain-behavior relationships, using both psychological and neuroscientific
methods
II. Fundamental Properties of All Memory
1. Ebbinghuas’s forgetting curve illustrated what?
a. Most memory loss occurs within the hour but the bare bones of a memory
endures after many details are culled
2. William James proposed a process of memory. What does this mean?
a. Multi stage
b. Multiple memories are initiated at the same time and last for
different amounts of time.
3. What is consolidation? What is the process?
a. The process by which a long term memory gradually stabilizes for
long-term storage.
b. Starts with original learning experience
c. Occurs in parallel with short term memory
4. How does sleep affect consolidation?
a. Learning followed by sleep has better retention
5. With the case of HM, Brenda Milner found:
a. HM had intact long term memory
b. Shallow retrograde amnesia
○ Limited memories of the months prior to surgery
c. Profound anterograde amnesia
○ HM was unable to form new long term memories
○ Short term memory seemed fine
6. HM had a deficit. What does this mean?
a. Consolidation
b. The surgery disrupted memories still in in the process of consolidation
(shallow retrograde amnesia) and prevented the consolidation of new long
term memories (profound anterograde amnesia)
7. What are the recency and primacy effects? What period of learning is most
at risk?
a. Recency effect: remembering the newest terms
b. Primary effect: remembering the first terms
c. Information learned in the middle is most at risk because it is being
interfered with by both the recent information and primary information.
8. T/F: short term memory and long term memory are independent processes.
a. True
9. What is a retrieval cue?
a. An element of a previous learning experience that causes remembered
information to be reactivated
I. Learning and Memory: Basic Definitions
1. What is learning?
a. Process of which new information is acquired for storage
2. What are the properties of learning?
a. Initiated by experience
b. Selects information that enters into memory
3. Fill in the blank: learning is like a
a. Filter
4. What is memory?
a. Information extracted from experience and stored for later recovery/use
5. What are the properties of memory?
a. It persists after the remembered experience ends
b. It can enter a latent state before being activated by a retrieval process
c. The content of memory reflects the experience that created it
6. T/F: Short term memory isn’t considered real memory because it does not
endure beyond experience
a. False; it only endures for seconds but those seconds count
7. What is a latent state?
a. The stored form of a memory; long term memories must be in this state
so that they can endure
8. T/F: Learning and Memory are directly observed so no explanatory power is
needed.
a. False- they are inferred; explanatory power is crucial
9. How do psychologists study learning and memory?
a. Systematically vary experience
b. Monitor for later changes in behavior that vary with differences
in experience
c. Draw data based inferences about the intervening learning and memory
process that connect the two
10. How do neuroscientists study learning and memory?
a. Manipulate the brain, observe behavioral changes
b. Vary experience and observe behavioral changes in the brain
11. What is the engram and what is its significance in learning and memory?
a. The neurobiological representation of stored information
○ Memory
b. The process by which engrams are formed or encoded
○ Learning
12. What does behavioral neuroscience aim to understand?
, a. Brain-behavior relationships, using both psychological and neuroscientific
methods
II. Fundamental Properties of All Memory
1. Ebbinghuas’s forgetting curve illustrated what?
a. Most memory loss occurs within the hour but the bare bones of a memory
endures after many details are culled
2. William James proposed a process of memory. What does this mean?
a. Multi stage
b. Multiple memories are initiated at the same time and last for
different amounts of time.
3. What is consolidation? What is the process?
a. The process by which a long term memory gradually stabilizes for
long-term storage.
b. Starts with original learning experience
c. Occurs in parallel with short term memory
4. How does sleep affect consolidation?
a. Learning followed by sleep has better retention
5. With the case of HM, Brenda Milner found:
a. HM had intact long term memory
b. Shallow retrograde amnesia
○ Limited memories of the months prior to surgery
c. Profound anterograde amnesia
○ HM was unable to form new long term memories
○ Short term memory seemed fine
6. HM had a deficit. What does this mean?
a. Consolidation
b. The surgery disrupted memories still in in the process of consolidation
(shallow retrograde amnesia) and prevented the consolidation of new long
term memories (profound anterograde amnesia)
7. What are the recency and primacy effects? What period of learning is most
at risk?
a. Recency effect: remembering the newest terms
b. Primary effect: remembering the first terms
c. Information learned in the middle is most at risk because it is being
interfered with by both the recent information and primary information.
8. T/F: short term memory and long term memory are independent processes.
a. True
9. What is a retrieval cue?
a. An element of a previous learning experience that causes remembered
information to be reactivated
