09.+Encoding+&+Retrieval

March 10, 2015
 * 09. Encoding & Retrieval**

Intention to remember Cues, connections, and targets Context cues Internal state cues
 * Outline**

Nilsson (1987): Participants learned a list words and then were tested.
 * Intention to remember**
 * 3 groups:
 * Control: study, then test
 * Motivation-Test: studied words first. Then, before being tested, were told that they would get cash for high scores.
 * Motivation-Study: before studying, subjects were told that they would get cash for high scores. Then they studied and were tested.
 * Results: No significant difference in performance
 * Note: The control group reported that they would have remembered more if they had been motivated. Subjects in the motivated groups also reported that they put in extra effort.


 * Intention to remember does not // directly // affect memory.
 * Intention to remember can affect learning by changing the learner's behavior.

Indirect benefits of intention to learn:
 * Attention: pay attention to whatever you want to remember
 * Processing: engage in beneficial processing (e.g., deep processing, mnemonics, etc.)
 * Effort: put more time/effort into learning

Hyde & Jenkins (1973): Subjects study 24 words. Then tested on recall.
 * Two variables:
 * Depth of processing
 * Shallow: whether the word contains 'e' or 'g'
 * Deep: pleasantness
 * Intentionality
 * Told: "There will be a test"
 * Incidental learning (not told that there will be a test)
 * Intending to learn shouldn't affect:
 * effort, attention, type of processing
 * Results: Deep processing recalled more words than shallow processing groups. Intention to learn had no effect.
 * Type of information processing matters.
 * Intention to remember does not.

Intention to remember at //at encoding// affects learning indirectly by affecting attention, processing, and effort.

Remembering Activities that create good connections: Three kinds of cues: Example: Who ran the 1st 4-minute mile?
 * Cues, Connections, Targets **
 * Always starts with a cue or cues
 * Requires connecting the cues to the targets
 * elaborative encoding
 * organizational processing
 * deep processing
 * Direct: The question you're trying to answer (e.g., who wrote Catch-22?)
 * Context: Your external environment
 * State: Your internal environment (e.g., mood, sobriety, etc.)
 * Say you're tired after track practice and your coach tells you the answer is Banister.
 * Direct cue: Who ran the first 4-minute mile?
 * Context cue: your high school track
 * State: out of breath
 * But if someone asks you later...you've context cues and state cues

Godden & Baddeley (1975): Classic study. Scuba divers learn words on land and under water.
 * Context**

Physical context matters:
 * Smith (1979): Subjects learn words in a distinctive room
 * 3 conditions
 * Tested in same room
 * Tested in different room
 * Tested in different room but asked to imagine the first room
 * Results: Different room condition performed worst. Different room + imagined condition performed just as well as same room condition.

Mental context matters too
 * Marian & Neisser (2000): Asked participants who spoke both Russian and English to recall life experiences. All subjects had immigrated to the US around age 14.
 * Subjects were interviewed in either Russian or English. They were given words (e.g., summer, doctor, cat) as prompts.
 * Subjects were able to retrieve more Russian memories when interviewed in Russian than when interviewed in English. Able to retrieve more English memories when interviewed in English than when interviewed in Russian.
 * Better memory when retrieval language matched "learning" language.
 * Does not mean that people forgot Russian experiences after immigration. The memory was available; they needed the right context cue to make it accessible.
 * Delaney et al. (2010): Subjects study a list of words, then have a free recall test.
 * Three groups:[[image:delaney.png width="240" height="135" align="right"]]
 * Control (multiplication task)
 * Imagine recent domestic travel (near change)
 * Imagine a recent international travel (far change)
 * Control able to recall the most. Near change group recalled less, and far change group recalled the least.
 * Explanation: The more distant the travel...
 * the more internal context changed prior to recall
 * the more difficult recall became

Studying
 * Smith & Rothkopf (1984): Participants view videos of 4 statistics lectures[[image:conditions.png width="200" height="59" align="right"]]
 * Two variables:
 * Spacing: view videos over 4 days or 1 day
 * Number of rooms: view videos in 4 rooms or in 1 room
 * Results:[[image:contextspacing.png width="269" height="299" align="right"]]
 * Context enrichment effect
 * 4 rooms performed better than 1 room.
 * better to study in various contexts
 * Spacing effect
 * 4 days performed better than 1 day
 * more learning occurs if learning events are spaced apart
 * Conclusions:
 * Learning works best wen learning events are spaced apart
 * Reinstating the study context improves test performance


 * Saufley, Otaka, and Bavaresco (1985): Looked at test grades over several years at UC Berkeley
 * Students were randomly assigned to take exams in same or different classrooms
 * Result: Context did not affect test scores
 * Why?
 * Possibly because they studied at home
 * Sometimes the data are messy. What works in lab, or in theory, doesn't always work in real life.
 * Problems with studying where you will be tested:
 * You can always just imagine the other context.
 * The evidence that it works is limited.
 * Aren't you supposed to know the information after you graduate? (i.e., outside of that room?)[[image:Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 2.22.49 PM.png width="204" height="89" align="right"]]
 * Smith, Glenberg, and Bjork (1978)
 * Study 1: Study in Room A.[[image:overlap.png width="172" height="127" align="right"]]
 * Test in either Room A or Room B.
 * Subjects tested in Room A did better. Cue-overlap.
 * Study 2: Study in Room A. Study again in Room A or Room B. Tested in Room C.[[image:Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 2.23.07 PM.png width="207" height="77" align="right"]]
 * Subjects who studied in Room A and Room B performed better.
 * Benefits of varying the conditions of practice: more cue-overlap.

Explanation of childhood amnesia:
 * You don't have the same internal state
 * You can't retrieve because your cues now are different (you see a different world)
 * You didn't make connections because you knew nothing.
 * You may also perceive your context differently (or maybe it's really different)

Goodwin et al. (1969):
 * State**
 * Medical students produce associations to verbal stimuli after consuming...
 * A soft drink
 * A cocktail with about 10 oz. of 80-proof vodka
 * 1 day later, attempt to recall associations while...
 * Sober
 * Intoxicated
 * Results: (for the graph, lower is better)
 * Recall sober: people who studied while sober did better than people who studied while intoxicated
 * Recall intoxicated: people who studied while intoxicated did about as well as people who studied sober, and better than people who studied sober and recalled while intoxicated.
 * Conclusion: If you studied sober, you'll test better while sober. If you studied drunk, you'll test better while drunk.

Eich et al. (1975):
 * Participants study a list of words after smoking:
 * A regular cigarette
 * A cigarette with marijuana
 * Tested 4 hours later after smoking...
 * a regular cigarette
 * a cigarette with marijuana
 * Results:
 * Test after ordinary cigarette: subjects who learned after smoking an ordinary cigarette did better than those who smoked a marijuana cigarette
 * Test after marijuana cigarette: both performed about the same, and about as well as people who had both learned and tested after having an ordinary cigarette.

Story about the alcoholic guy who bragged about being great at pool, but sucked at it when he was sober. Immediately after he started drinking, he was good again, even after just 2 sips.
 * It's not about whether he's sober or drunk
 * It's a //context// effect
 * It's not the physical environment. It's the beer bottle.
 * Alcoholics who are shaky, etc. calm down when alcohol is available, even before they ingest it.

Miles & Hardman (1998): Participants study a list of words while exercising or at rest. Later tested while exercising or at rest.
 * Result: If tested in same state (exercise or rest) as learning state, better recall.

Ludwig (1972):
 * Jonah is a Vietnam veteran with 4 personalities:
 * Jonah: shy, polite conventional
 * King Young: charming, gregarious, ladies-man
 * Sammy: rational, intellectual
 * Usoffa Abdulla: aka Son of Omega, sullen, physically powerful
 * Had a personality learn a list of word pairs. Then tested memory for the pairs in each personality. Repeated this procedure (with a unique list) for each personality.
 * Results: each personality seems to know its own list, but not the others (Note: for the graph, y-axis is errors, so lower is better)
 * Extreme internal states (changes in personality) can lead to extreme state effects

Big Picture on Context:
 * When we learn anything, we are also encoding the surrounding environment and our internal state.
 * Context and state can be retrieval cues