BHS 499-07 Memory and Amnesia

1. BHS 499-07Memory and Amnesia Metamemory

2. Metamemory • Metamemory – conscious awareness of and control of one’s own memory processes. • The belief that memory was worse (tonic water) led to worse performance. • How do we know whether we know something or not? • Mnemonics – devices for remembering.

3. Cues and Targets • Targets – the pieces of information that we wish to remember. • Cues – the questions used to elicit information. • Target-based sources – information from the trace that informs a judgment (e.g. ease of recall). • Cue-based sources – info from question (e.g., familiarity of info in the question itself).

4. Cue Familiarity Hypothesis • Metamemory judgments are made based on the familiarity of info in the cue. • Grandmother’s maiden name: • If you know a lot about your family you might guess that you know this. • If you know little about your family you might guess that you will not know this.

5. Accessibility Hypothesis • Metamemory judgments are inferential. • People use what is at hand or partial retrievals to make inferences. • Sources of information: • Amount of info activated to make the judgment. • Intensity of the activated traces (ease of access, vividness, specificity of info)

6. Competition Hypothesis • Metamemory judgments are influenced by the number of memory trace competitors involved in retrieval. • Judgments are greater when there are fewer competitors. • The more competitors the less likely the info will be retrieved – the more difficult the retrieval.

7. Judgments of Learning (JOL) • An estimate of how well something has been learned. • These tend to be very inaccurate compared to actual testing. • Inability hypothesis – people have little awareness of their own mental processes. • People are fooled when info is still in working memory.

8. JOL Cues • JOLs are influenced by three types of cues: extrinsic, intrinsic, mnemonic. • Extrinsic cues – aspects of the learning environment (practice, presentation time) • Intrinsic cues – ease of learning. • Mnemonic cues – memory-based info, how well someone has done before. • People use intrinsic more than extrinsic and shift to mnemonic with experience.

9. Allocation of Study Time • People allocate study time based on how easy they think new info will be to learn. • Allocation of time not always effective. • Labor in vain effect – people study hard items using massed practice, with little progress. • With experience, people focus on the region of proximal learning – better.

10. Feel of Knowing (FOK) • Forgetting has different subjective qualities: • Seems like you never learned it. • Feel like the answer is in there somewhere. • FOK judgments are reasonable predictors of performance on a later recognition test.

11. Problems with FOK • Game show method – subjects either answer the question (control) or indicate that they know the answer (game show). • People know whether they have the answer before they can retrieve it. • Based on familiarity with info in the question, not necessarily what is in memory. • People give higher FOK ratings to things they think they ought to know.

12. Partial Info & FOK Judgments • With a large amount of accurate partial knowledge, FOK judgments will correspond to later recall. • If partial info is incorrect, correspondence is lower. • Partial info predicts remember vs know judgments. • FOK is affected by number of competitors (more = lower judgments).

13. Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) • This happens when people fail to recall but feel they are just about to remember. • Characteristics: • Happens about once a week. • Words similar can be recalled. • Often affects a proper noun (person’s name). • May be aware of the first letter or number of syllables. • Unrelated to anxiety or stress.

14. Theories of TOT • Incomplete activation – the search range is too broad, too many possibilities. • Blocking – related but inappropriate competitors are activated and block access to the correct info. • People keep retrieving the wrong answer. • Recently activated states are more likely to be retrieved again, creating a vicious circle.

15. Knowing that you Don’t Know • Sometimes we know that we know, even without remembering, sometimes not. • People make judgments based on the familiarity of the cue (question). • People were slower at making “don’t know” judgments if they had previously learned a “don’t know” response. • Lack of retrieval to distinctive info occurs

16. Remember Vs Know • Remember-Know Judgment – remember includes context of learning, know does not. • Know judgment depends on familiarity. • Things that affect remember judgments do not affect know judgments and vice versa – double dissociation. • These reflect different ways of using memory.

17. Hindsight Bias • Creeping determinism – I knew that would happen. • People remember their previous mental state as being closer to their current one. • Ratings of past grief closer to their current states than their previous ratings.

18. Knew-It-All-Along Effect • A variant of hindsight bias. • To evoke this effect: • Stage 1 – Have subjects judge whether statements are true or false. • Stage 2 – Present feedback about judgments. • Stage 3 – Ask what subjects knew in Stage 1 • Reports of the subjects with feedback are biased toward the feedback.

19. Remembering Forgetting • How well do people remember whether they remembers or forgot in the past? • People are more accurate at remembering their successes than remembering that they forgot. • 50% of forgotten items were remembered as having been remembered.

20. Avoiding Hindsight Bias • If the current knowledge state is discredited, people can disregard it and be more accurate about past knowledge. • When people were told that feedback in stage 2 was inaccurate, they correctly remembered stage 1. • People told to monitor the source do better, but not just telling them to try.

21. Remembering Beliefs • Expectations about metamemory affect beliefs about happiness. • 50% of subjects were told that unhappy memories fade quickly, 50% happy. • People told that unhappy memories fade were more likely to rate their childhood as less happy. • May think they forgot unhappy memories.

22. Prospective Memory • Used to remember to do things in the future. • Memory for past events is retrospective. • Two components: • Remembering what to do. • Remembering to do it. • The environment is monitored for a cue to remember to do it – uses frontal lobes.

23. Types of Prospective Memory • Two types: • Event-based – remembering to do something when some event occurs (e.g., tell someone something) • Time-based – remembering to do something at a specific time (e.g., take a pill). • Time-based is harder than event-based. • Errors with repetitive time-based tasks.

24. Mnemonics • Mental or physical devices to help people remember. • Peg word • Method of loci • Rhyming, acronyms (HOMES), acrostics (first letters of a phrase) • Knuckle mnemonic

25. Exceptional Memory • Memorists (mnemonists) – not relying on exceptional intelligence or mnemonics. • S. – Luria’s subject in Russia, had an unusual neurological condition. • Rajan Mahadevan – recited pi to 31,811 digits. Uses serial position not semantics, had normal memory skills for other info. • Eidetic imagery – may be present in young children but disappears.