Cognitive Psychology by K. Gilhooly, F. Lyddy, and F. Pollick (first edition) – Summary chapter 5

The case of H.M demonstrates three important aspects of long-term memory processes:

1. Long-term memory processes are not distributed throughout the brain.
2. Long-term memory encompasses a number of different abilities.
3. Memory is separable from language, perceptual and other cognitive functions.

Amnesia refers to a pattern of memory loss affecting elements of long-term memory, while short-term memory remains intact. It is sometimes also called the amnesic syndrome. Amnesia has a number of general characteristics:

1. Short-term memory is intact
2. Memory for language and concepts is intact
3. There is severe and lasting anterograde amnesia: memory for events after the onset of amnesia will be impaired.
4. There will be retrograde amnesia, the patient will have a loss of memory for events prior to the onset of amnesia.
5. Skill learning, conditioning and priming will be unaffected.

Ribot’s law states that recently formed memories are more susceptible to impairment than are older memories. The Wechsler Memory Scale is a widely used neurocognitive assessment that measures visual memory, auditory memory and working memory. There are several causes for amnesia, such as brain surgery, infections, head injuries, a stroke or Korsakoff’s syndrome, in which a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency causes brain damage.

James made the difference between primary and secondary memory. Secondary memory is long-term memory. Verbal learning refers to the area of experimental psychology concerned with how we learn and remember language-based items. There is a distinction in long-term memory between the following to long-term memory types:

1. Non-declarative memory (implicit memory)
   This is the memory that is not accessed consciously and that we are not able to report verbally. It includes memory which benefits from previous experience but without our awareness of that experience.
2. Declarative memory (explicit memory)
   This is the memory that involves conscious recollection of memories such as events, facts, people and places.

There are three types of recollection of information from the memory:

1. Free recall
   Participants in a task recall the information in any order, without hints or clues to recall.
2. Cued recall
   Participants in a task recall the information and are given a hint to aid the recall.
3. Recognition
   Participants must verify if an item is a target.

Tulving proposed a distinction within declarative memory. The distinction can also be seen as a difference between remembering and knowing.

1. Episodic memory
   This is the memory for events, experiences and episodes (e.g: yesterday was a good day).
2. Semantic memory
   This is the memory for facts and knowledge about the world (e.g: Paris is the capital of France).

There are different types of non-declarative memory, all showing implicit memory:

1. Procedural memory
   This includes skill learning. It is closely associated with motor performance, but cognitive skills and some perceptual learning skills are also aspects of procedural memory. Focussing our attention on a skill can disrupt the processes involved and performance can suffer. This is also called paralysis by analysis or ‘choking’. Procedural memory is generally preserved in patients with amnesia.
2. Habit learning
   This refers to memory acquired over time through repeated associations between stimuli and responses. One set of tasks that have been used to investigate habit learning in the absence of input from declarative memory involves probabilistic classification learning. This involves learning a set of associations that cannot be readily memorized and information from across many trials must be used to complete the task.
3. Priming
   This refers to an implicit memory effect whereby exposure to a stimulus affects a subsequent response (e.g: the cow drinks milk). Conceptual priming tasks include category exemplar tasks. These tasks are those where participants are given category names one by one and are asked to generate exemplars for each. Some categories will have been encountered during an earlier stage.

Tulving notes three key properties of episodic memory. It is associated with our subjective sense of time, there is a connection to the self and the mental time travel is associated with a special kind of conscious awareness called autonoetic consciousness. Autonoetic consciousness allows humans to use memory to relive past events and imagine ourselves in the future, from a self-perspective.

Memory is constructive and when we recall our past experiences, we reconstruct the event in our minds, using information gained before, after and at the time of the event itself. Schemas are organized memory structures that allow us to apply past experience to novel situations so as to guide behaviour. Schemas produce expectations that reduce the ambiguity of new situations, although these expectations an lead to erroneous judgements. The adaptive function of memory is using the cognitive functions to focus on the aspects that contribute to thinking about the future. The memory that allows us to keep track of plans and carry out intended actions is called prospective memory. Prospective memory allows us to remember to perform certain actions. Prospective memory lapses often involve a failure to interrupt habitual routines. Action slips involve an action being completed when it was not intended (e.g: sugar in the teapot instead of the pot).

There are event-based and time-based prospective memory tasks. Event-based memory may be triggered by a particular cue. Time-based memory may be triggered by a particular time. Pulses are intentions that are time-locked (e.g: dinner has to be taken out of the oven in 30 minutes). The intentions must be carried out at a particular time. Steps are intentions that have a wider time frame in which they can occur (e.g: I have to call John some time this week). There is evidence that obsessive-compulsive behaviours arise from a deficit in prospective memory.

Autobiographical memories are episodic memories for personally experienced events in a person’s life. False memories are inaccurate recollections of events that did not occur or distortions of events that did occur. Imagining false events increases the likelihood that they will be recalled. This is called the imagination inflation, the strengthening of a false memory through repeated retrieval. Demand characteristics are the aspects of a research study which convey hypotheses or aims to the participants and may thereby shape performance. Disputed memories happen with siblings that are close in age, where the ownership of the memory is not clear. The siblings both believe that they were the protagonist of the memory.

Déjà vu is a type of illusion of autobiographical memory. It is the knowledge that a situation could not have been experienced, combined with the feeling that it has. There are three possible mechanisms for déjà vu:

1. Split perception
   We get a brief glimpse of a visual scene before becoming fully aware of the scene.
2. Implicit memory
   We have already experienced the scene or part thereof, but it has been stored such that only a feeling of familiarity is elicited when we re-encounter it.
3. Gestalt familiarity
   The scene we encounter closely resembles a scene we have encountered in the past.

Semantic memory is our store of general knowledge about the world. Metamemory is the ability to monitor and inspect the content of memory. It allows us to know whether we know something (e.g: the likelihood that we know something, which we cannot currently recall). The long-lasting store of knowledge was referred to by Bahrick as the permastore. The permastore involves the long-term retention of content that has been acquired and relearned over a period of time, even if rarely used thereafter (e.g: people remember Spanish words learned in high school up to 50 years after high school).