benlehrburger/college-text-corpus · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Allow one memory to trigger another etc. such that you are lead to the proper information through the web of connections among ideas
Only happens if proper connections are made during acquisition
Elaborate encoding promotes retrieval
Words are much more likely to be remember if they appear among elaborate sentences than in simpler sentences
The richness of a sentence offers the potential for many connections, which in turn offer potential retrieval paths
Retrieval paths: paths that can guide your thoughts toward the content to be remembered
Organizing and memorizing
You memorize well when you discover the order within the material; conversely, if you find or impose an organization on the material, you will easily remember it
Mnemonic strategies: provide a way of organizing to-be-remembered material
Peg-word systems: pegging words to other words for helping recall
Involves a trade-off – if you spend time on one or two memory connections, you spend less time thinking about other possible connections
Understanding and memorizing
Your memory for episodic knowledge is dependent on your being able to organize the material to be remembered
The best organization of complex materials is dependent on understanding (you remember best what you understand best)

Chapter 7: Interconnections between Acquisition and Retrieval
Learning as preparation for retrieval
There are different ways to retrieve information
Retrieval paths guide you along connections in memory until you reach the target material
Context-dependent learning: the environment in which one learns can help learning (offers more meaning connections for retrieval paths) or hinder learning (offers less meaning connections for retrieval paths)
Context reinstatement: re-creating the thoughts and feelings of the learning episode even if you’re in a different place at the time of recall
What matters is the psychological context, not the physical context
Makes memory search easier by proposing an accurate starting point for retrieval paths
Encoding specificity: what you encode is specific, not just the physical stimulus as you encountered it, but the stimulus together with its context
Connections have meaning themselves that is encoded in memory during learning, and those connections can change the meaning of what is remembered
The memory network
Memory acquisition involves the creation or strengthening of memory connections
Memory is a vast network of ideas, nones, connected to each other via associative links
Spreading activation: nodes activating and firing, serving as a source for further activation, spreading through the network
A node is activated when it receives a strong enough input signal, and can then activate its connections; as more and more activation arrives at a particular node, the activation level for that node increases; once the activation level reaches the node’s respond threshold, the node fires, making the node a source of activation itself; through the process of summation, multiple subthreshold activation inputs can be added together to bring the node to threshold; if the node has already fired, its activation level is higher and is more prone to weaker inputs
People can exert executive control over the starting points for memory searches; people can also shut down spreading activation
Retrieval cues
The more information we have, the more nodes will be activated and the more likely the proper connection will be found
Semantic priming
Summation of threshold activity: insufficient activation received from one source can add to the insufficient activation received from another source to potential activate target nodes
Lexical-decision task: measuring how quickly people can judge whether a string of letters is a word or not
Semantic priming: a specific prior event – two things being related in meaning – will produce a state of readiness later on
Forms of memory testing
Recall: presented with a retrieval cue and needing to come up with the information
Source memory: a recollection of the source of your current knowledge, such as the time or place
Hippocampus
Recall depends on this
Recognition: cases in which information is presented and you must decide whether it’s the sought-after information
Familiarity: information that is familiar to you but does not have as clear of a source as source memory
Anterior parahippocampus
Recognition depends on this
Source memories/recall and familiarity/recognition are fundamentally different
People are better at remembering that something is familiar rather than why something is familiar
Implicit memory
Explicit memories: revealed by direct memory testing (like recall and recognition) – testing that forces participants to remember the past
Implicit memories: revealed by indirect memory testing and manifest as priming effects
Priming effect: participants’ behavior is influenced by prior events but they are unaware
Memory without awareness: people can be influenced by past experiences that they do not consciously remember at all
The illusion of truth
Implicit memories leave people with a broad sense that a stimulus is somehow distinctive; this leaves lots of potential for misinterpreting a memory
Familiarity increases credibility
Source confusion: when a stimulus is implicitly familiar to someone for reasons other than those relevant
Theoretical treatments of implicit memory
Processing fluency: the speed and ease with which a pathway will carry activation
Perception processing pathway: the sequence of detector and the connections between detectors that activation flows through in recognizing a specific stimulus
Memory processing pathway: the sequence of nodes and the connections between nodes that activation flows through during memory retrieval
Use of a processing pathway strengthens that pathway because the baseline activation level of nodes or detectors increases if the nodes or detectors have been used frequently in the past or if they’ve been used recently
People are sensitive to the degree of and changes in processing fluency
The feeling of specialness we feel when recognizing a stimulus is created by the discrepancy between the experience and expectation of detecting fluency
The attribution of specialness is often interpreted as familiarity and attributed to the correct source because you have the relevant source memory; in other cases, you make a reasonable context-guided inference; in others, you misinterpret your own processing fluency
The nature of familiarity
Familiarity: a conclusion that you draw, rather than a feeling triggered by a stimuli
A stimulus will seem familiar whenever the following requirements are met:
You have encountered the stimulus before
Because of that prior encounter, your processing of the stimulus is now faster and more efficient (an increase in processing fluency)
You detect that increased fluency, and this leads you to register the stimulus as special
You try to figure out why the stimulus seems special, and you reach the conclusion that is it special because you’ve seen it before
When a stimulus doesn’t feel familiar but is: steps 3 and 4 fail
When a stimulus is not familiar but feels as so (the illusion of familiarity): the processing of a completely novel stimulus is more fluent than expected
The hierarchy of memory types













Amnesia: loss of memory
Retrograde amnesia: memory is disrupted for things learned prior to the event that caused amnesia
Anterograde amnesia: memory is disrupted for things learned after the event that caused amnesia
Intact implicit memories but loss of explicit memory (however, the opposite pattern is also possible)
eg) H.M. – severe anterograde amnesia
Korsakoff’s syndrome: anterograde amnesia found in alcoholics
Brain damage is likely to disrupt some types of learning but not others
Optimal learning
Use multiple perspectives to form as many connections and retrieval paths in as many contexts as possible

Chapter 8: Remembering Complex Events
Memory errors and memory gaps

Allow one memory to trigger another etc. such that you are lead to the proper information through the web of connections among ideas

Only happens if proper connections are made during acquisition

Elaborate encoding promotes retrieval

Words are much more likely to be remember if they appear among elaborate sentences than in simpler sentences

The richness of a sentence offers the potential for many connections, which in turn offer potential retrieval paths

Retrieval paths: paths that can guide your thoughts toward the content to be remembered

Organizing and memorizing

You memorize well when you discover the order within the material; conversely, if you find or impose an organization on the material, you will easily remember it

Mnemonic strategies: provide a way of organizing to-be-remembered material

Peg-word systems: pegging words to other words for helping recall

Involves a trade-off – if you spend time on one or two memory connections, you spend less time thinking about other possible connections

Understanding and memorizing

Your memory for episodic knowledge is dependent on your being able to organize the material to be remembered

The best organization of complex materials is dependent on understanding (you remember best what you understand best)

Chapter 7: Interconnections between Acquisition and Retrieval

Learning as preparation for retrieval

There are different ways to retrieve information

Retrieval paths guide you along connections in memory until you reach the target material

Context-dependent learning: the environment in which one learns can help learning (offers more meaning connections for retrieval paths) or hinder learning (offers less meaning connections for retrieval paths)

Context reinstatement: re-creating the thoughts and feelings of the learning episode even if you’re in a different place at the time of recall

What matters is the psychological context, not the physical context

Makes memory search easier by proposing an accurate starting point for retrieval paths

Encoding specificity: what you encode is specific, not just the physical stimulus as you encountered it, but the stimulus together with its context

Connections have meaning themselves that is encoded in memory during learning, and those connections can change the meaning of what is remembered

The memory network

Memory acquisition involves the creation or strengthening of memory connections

Memory is a vast network of ideas, nones, connected to each other via associative links

Spreading activation: nodes activating and firing, serving as a source for further activation, spreading through the network

A node is activated when it receives a strong enough input signal, and can then activate its connections; as more and more activation arrives at a particular node, the activation level for that node increases; once the activation level reaches the node’s respond threshold, the node fires, making the node a source of activation itself; through the process of summation, multiple subthreshold activation inputs can be added together to bring the node to threshold; if the node has already fired, its activation level is higher and is more prone to weaker inputs

People can exert executive control over the starting points for memory searches; people can also shut down spreading activation

Retrieval cues

The more information we have, the more nodes will be activated and the more likely the proper connection will be found

Semantic priming

Summation of threshold activity: insufficient activation received from one source can add to the insufficient activation received from another source to potential activate target nodes

Lexical-decision task: measuring how quickly people can judge whether a string of letters is a word or not

Semantic priming: a specific prior event – two things being related in meaning – will produce a state of readiness later on

Forms of memory testing

Recall: presented with a retrieval cue and needing to come up with the information

Source memory: a recollection of the source of your current knowledge, such as the time or place

Hippocampus

Recall depends on this

Recognition: cases in which information is presented and you must decide whether it’s the sought-after information

Familiarity: information that is familiar to you but does not have as clear of a source as source memory

Anterior parahippocampus

Recognition depends on this

Source memories/recall and familiarity/recognition are fundamentally different

People are better at remembering that something is familiar rather than why something is familiar

Implicit memory

Explicit memories: revealed by direct memory testing (like recall and recognition) – testing that forces participants to remember the past

Implicit memories: revealed by indirect memory testing and manifest as priming effects

Priming effect: participants’ behavior is influenced by prior events but they are unaware

Memory without awareness: people can be influenced by past experiences that they do not consciously remember at all

The illusion of truth

Implicit memories leave people with a broad sense that a stimulus is somehow distinctive; this leaves lots of potential for misinterpreting a memory

Familiarity increases credibility

Source confusion: when a stimulus is implicitly familiar to someone for reasons other than those relevant

Theoretical treatments of implicit memory

Processing fluency: the speed and ease with which a pathway will carry activation

Perception processing pathway: the sequence of detector and the connections between detectors that activation flows through in recognizing a specific stimulus

Memory processing pathway: the sequence of nodes and the connections between nodes that activation flows through during memory retrieval

Use of a processing pathway strengthens that pathway because the baseline activation level of nodes or detectors increases if the nodes or detectors have been used frequently in the past or if they’ve been used recently

People are sensitive to the degree of and changes in processing fluency

The feeling of specialness we feel when recognizing a stimulus is created by the discrepancy between the experience and expectation of detecting fluency

The attribution of specialness is often interpreted as familiarity and attributed to the correct source because you have the relevant source memory; in other cases, you make a reasonable context-guided inference; in others, you misinterpret your own processing fluency

The nature of familiarity

Familiarity: a conclusion that you draw, rather than a feeling triggered by a stimuli

A stimulus will seem familiar whenever the following requirements are met:

You have encountered the stimulus before

Because of that prior encounter, your processing of the stimulus is now faster and more efficient (an increase in processing fluency)

You detect that increased fluency, and this leads you to register the stimulus as special

You try to figure out why the stimulus seems special, and you reach the conclusion that is it special because you’ve seen it before

When a stimulus doesn’t feel familiar but is: steps 3 and 4 fail

When a stimulus is not familiar but feels as so (the illusion of familiarity): the processing of a completely novel stimulus is more fluent than expected

The hierarchy of memory types

Amnesia: loss of memory

Retrograde amnesia: memory is disrupted for things learned prior to the event that caused amnesia

Anterograde amnesia: memory is disrupted for things learned after the event that caused amnesia

Intact implicit memories but loss of explicit memory (however, the opposite pattern is also possible)

eg) H.M. – severe anterograde amnesia

Korsakoff’s syndrome: anterograde amnesia found in alcoholics

Brain damage is likely to disrupt some types of learning but not others

Optimal learning

Use multiple perspectives to form as many connections and retrieval paths in as many contexts as possible

Chapter 8: Remembering Complex Events

Memory errors and memory gaps