2011 VN'ers Psychology U3 Questions Thread

[Zafaraaaa]

In Eric Kandel's experiments, where he investigates the role of the neuron in memory formation, are the Alpysia he studies capable of Short term memory?

[Darren]

Yeah they are, his experiments concluded that they could form new memories and as he kept doing it over and over again, the time spent remembering the information got briefer because they could remember it as LTM.

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Also.. could anybody please highlight the function of the amygdala and the temporal lobes specifically in the role of memory? The textbook only outlines the direct role of the hippocampus but isn't clear about the others.
Thanks!

[Glockmeister]

It's a bit more complicated than this, but it's 3am in the morning and this is the best I can do:

Generally, amygdala is responsible for emotional content of memory. Temporal lobe stores a few things, including audio memories, but more interestingly, facial information (it is possible that if you have a lesion in the Middle Temporal Gyrus you can get a situation you can get a situation where patients are unable to recognise faces, even of people they are familiar and indeed quite close to e.g. a patient's spouse. This condition is known as Prosopagnosia, or face blindness).

[poojas73]

what would happen when a split-brain patient is asked to identify a pencil among 10 other items on a table, while blindfolded, using only his left hand to feel the objects?

[burbs]

what would happen when a split-brain patient is asked to identify a pencil among 10 other items on a table, while blindfolded, using only his left hand to feel the objects?

I think recognition of objects is in the temporal lobes, but I'm not sure if haptic recognition is done there though. Either way as it is the left hand, they would have been able to pick the object if they were not blindfolded, so I guess that has to do with the patient's ability to pick objects without looking at them more than anything. 

[Zafaraaaa]

What is required for information to be transferred from a sensory register to short term or working memory?
A) attention
B) encoding
C) rehearsal
D) organisation

[I chose B initially, but turns out it was actually D? :S] Can someone please explain why?

[Darren]

I think D could be right because we need to organise the vast income of sensory information into the bare essentials before we manipulate it in working memory. Sensory information has many components such as the sound and visual so we need to organise what we need before it can be manipulated or stored further using rehearsal or chunking etc.

where was this question? it's pretty vague..!

[Zafaraaaa]

Oh yeaaah that makes sense! thank you The question was in the textbook

[Slumdawg]

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/human-cap/boxes.gif

SENSORY -----attention-----> STM -------encoding----> LTM

I'm pretty sure the answer should be A

[a/b]

I thought it would be A as well, there was a VCAA question that was like:

What psychological process primarily determines whether new, incoming sensory information enters short-term or working memory?


And their answer was Attention :/

[Zafaraaaa]

Ooh okay! A does make sense..haha maybe Grivas wrote the solutions wrong

[Glockmeister]

It's definitely A. You have to ask yourself, what sort of organisation takes place at the sensory level? (answer to that question is, nothing. All the organisation takes place in the brain.)

 Don't know why Grivas got it wrong. Might be something that the publishers should be told.

[Darren]

Yeah I agree ... I had a weird feeling about it. I always assume the book is right so I attempt to make justifications in vain. Guess I should learn to be more skeptical

[Sarah95]

is research methods going to be in the exam?

[Glockmeister]

If you've been studying it, it probably is.