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Memory & Attention - Coggle Diagram
Memory & Attention
Attention
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Dichotic listening task
- Different words in each ear
- Selectively attend to attended channel
- Still hear unattended channel (e.g. notice change in voice, name) -> cocktail party effect
=> bottleneck late in processing
Visual search task
- Find letters / colours
- Quick to find 1 feature => parallel processing
- Slower to find 2 features => serial processing
Divide attention
- Succeed if enough resources for both tasks
- Easier if less similar tasks
- Easier if more practice
Blindness
- Inattentional: don't notice something visible (but unexpected)
- Change: don't notice visual change (surprisingly)
- Because focusing on something else - not being processed
Short / long term memory
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Short-term memory
- 30s, limited capacity (5-9 items)
Working memory
- Temporary processing workspace
- Phonological loop: sound
- Visuospatial sketchpad: visual & spatial
- Episodic buffer: temporary integration & processing
- Central executive: management & sequencing
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Brain
- Central executive: planning & sequencing in frontal lobe
- Visuospatial sketchpad: visual areas in occipital lobe
Serial position effect
- U shaped graph for recall of word list
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Transfer from short -> long term via rehearsal
- Maintenance rehearsal: repeat
- Elaborative rehearsal: add meaning - best for retention
- Strengthened synaptic connections
(activated more easily when repeated)
-> more likely to remember
Brain
- Hippocampus: consolidation of short term memory
- Thalamus: sensory relay - affects new memories + recall
- Amygdala: remember emotive events more
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Forgetting
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2. Retrieval failure
In long term, cues not strong enough
Difficult to distinguish from decay
- same symptoms
-> stronger cue may trigger retrieval
3. Decay
In long term, fades with disuse
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Reversing forgetting
- Hypnosis & truth serums: don't work (but people may give more detailed answers)
- Repression: no evidence, remember more if traumatic
Improving memory
Improve encoding
- Elaborative rehearsal: complex, visual mental image
- Depth encoding: meaning & connection
Improve retrieval
- Context reinstatement: form memories in same place as retrieval
- Retrieval practice: actively try to remember
Methods
- Scientifically proven
- Elaborative encoding, deep processing
- Context reinstatement (can go back to refresh memory)
- Use visuospatial sketchpad, amygdala (emotion)
Method of loci aka memory palace
- Visuospatial mnemonic
- Familiar place, leave items in order
Aboriginal Australian method
- Storytelling in landscape
Studies
Butterfly names
- 76 medical students, 20 butterfly names
- Method of loci (mind palace) + Aboriginal Australian method (stories in rock garden) + control
- Both better than control
- AA method better for recall in order, less forgetting, improved memory score
Nutrition
- Monash students - tricarboxylic acid sequence
- AA method (garden with narrative)