REMEMBERING: THE ROLE OF THE CUE

1. REMEMBERING: THE ROLE OF THE CUE • Remembering as “ecphory” • A synthesis of engram, current state, and retrieval cue (Semon, 1909) • Cue Specificity • Free versus cued recallTulving & Psotka (1971)study categorized listfree recall: .40 then cued recall: .70 • Recall versus recognitionTulving & Watkins (1973)study word list (e.g., grape)then cue: vary stem size (gr-- = 2) 0 (recall) .25 full (recognition) .85

2. Encoding/Retrieval Specificity(Tulving, 1973) • Compares E/R Match versus Mismatch • Small but reliable effects of: • Verbal/associative “context” • Encoding task and level • Physical environment • Internal state and mood • Larger effects when other cues weak • Eich (1975): Marijuana / Placebo Study categorized list of 48 words • Study Test Free Recall Cued Recall • Pla Pla 11.5 24.0 • Pla Mar 9.9 23.7 • Mar Pla 6.7 22.6 • Mar Mar 10.5 22.3

3. Eich (1985): study / test room match / mismatch study long word list imagery instructions: isolated integrate with environment • E/R Specifity (cont’d) • Larger effects with “contextual encoding”

4. CUE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING • Occlusion • Cue activates other memories • Watkins’ (1979) cue overload principle • The “fan effect” • Classic associative interferenceRetroactive Interference DesignRI A-B A-C A-Bcontrol A-B rest A-BProactice Interference DesignPI A-C A-B A-BControl rest A-B A-B

5. B A C ASSOCIATIVE INTERFERENCE AND FORGETTING task: study and remember lists of paired-associates (A-B) learning AC interferes with AB AB learned first: Retroactive(RI) AC learned first: Proactive (PI)

6. RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE IN PAIRED-ASSOCIATE MEMORY(Barnes & Underwood, 1959) task: study and remember lists of paired-associates 10 Trials of AB pairs then 1 to 20 trials of AC pairs is AB association erased (“unlearned”)? NO: recognition-matching still good

7. Occlusion (cont’d) • Part-list cuing effects (Roediger, 1973) categorized lists, seven instances cue with: pc(remaining) category name only .63 and one instance .62 and two instances .56 and five instances .52 • Output interference • Recall of items within a category reduces PC of remaining items • (Smith 1971): categorized lists - controls order of category cues - recall decreases across order

8. Occlusion (cont’d) • Retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork & Bjork, 1994)Study sets of category-instance pairsFRUIT - orange; FRUIT - apple, etc TOOL - drilll; TOOL - hammer, etcRetrieval practice on half of some categories:FRUIT – or_____Cued recall test of all pairs: FRUIT - ? RP+ RP- No RP“good” e.g.’s .81 .41 .56“weak” e.g.’s .66 .35 .41 • Gargano & Chandler (1999): less interference with “study” practice only • Veling & van Kippenberg (2004): recognition speed for target words RP+: 678 ms RP-: 810 ms NRP: 759 ms

9. CUE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING (CONT’D) • Suppression • Target is inhibited, becomes less accessible to other cues“cross-cue” forgetting observed in some studies: Anderson & Spellman, 1995: practiced within-categ RED-blood .74 unpracticed within RED-tomato .22unpracticed across, related FOOD-strawberry .22 unpracticed across, unrelated TOOL-drill .38

10. Suppression (cont’d) • But some failures too:Gargano & Chandler (1999) Type of Cue during… practicetest RP- No RP FRUIT-or___ FRUIT-or___ .71 .79 FRUIT-__nge FRUIT-or___ .78 .80Fischler & Woods (1985):train AB, DB associates RI with half of A stimuli: AC pairs strong forgetting of A – B no forgetting of D - B

11. IS MEMORY PERMANENT? • The arguments for and against • Some memories seem to “last a lifetime” • But they may not; and others don’t • Much of forgetting seems to be “retrieval failure” • But sometimes all cues fail • Brain stimulation seems to awaken specific memories (Penfield, 1952) • But the effect is rare (40 of 520 patients), and events seem more schematic than episodic • Interference in the lab dominates forgetting • But the “forgetting function” is beautifully time-dependent(Power Law) • No confirmed mechanism of “decay” at neural level • But some evidence, and a long way to go