Psychology 1010- Chp. 6 & 13 Exam 3

Memory

Memory

Is an active system that receives information from the senses, puts` the data into a usable form, organizes as it stores it, and then it can be retrieved later from storage 

Three Processes of Memory 

Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval

Encoding

• a set of mental operations that people person on sensory information into a form that is unstable in the brain’s storage system. 

• Example- turning sound from vibrations into neural messages from the auditory nerve 

• Encoding is not limited to sensory information  

Storage

• holding the information for some period of time 

• The length depends on the system being used 

Retrieval

• getting the info out

• Most difficult task 

Information-Processing Model

• This approach focuses on the way information is handled, or processed, through three different systems of memory. Encoding, storage, and retrieval. 

• Big picture view 

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) model

•  retrieving many different aspects of memory all at once

• In AI

• Connections and timing of memory processes 

Levels of Processing Model

 focusing on the deeper processing, instead of basing on just visual characteristics, but remembering it through its meaning 

Sensory memory

• the first system in the process of memory, the point at which info enters the nervous system through the sensory systems 

• As long as those neural messages are traveling through the system it can be said that people have a memory 

• There are kinds of sensory memory: Iconic and Echoic 

Iconic Sensory Memory 

• Ex. seeing the possibly pantless person 

• Visual sensory system 

• George Sperling- memory in letters 

• Found that iconic memory is everything that they can see at one time 

• Iconic memory will be pushed out very quickly by new information 

• Iconic serves to help the visual system view surroundings as continuous and stable in spite of these saccadic movements

Eidetic imagery

the ability to access visual sensory memory over a long period of time

Echoic Sensory Memory 

• A brief memory of something that a person heard 

• Smaller than the capacity of ionic memory but it lasts longer 2-4 secs 

Short-term memory (STM)

If an incoming sensory message is important enough  to enter consciousness, the message will move from sensory memory to the next process

• STM tends to be encoded primarily in auditory form, like the voice in your head.

Selective attention

the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input 

Dr. Donald E. Broadbent’s original filter theory

• a bottleneck occurs between the processes of sensory memory and short-term memory 

• The bottleneck is the threshold into the STM 

Cocktail-party effect

Your brain filters information into your conscious awareness even if you are not paying attention to the other background noise.

Dr. Anne M. Treisman

•  selective attention operates in a two-stage filtering 

• The first stage- incoming stimuli in sensory memory are filtered on the basis of simple physical characteristics 

• The other signals are just being lessened (attenuation)

• The second stage- when something has passed the threshold 

• Ex. when a sleeping mother will awake to her infant’s cries 

Working memory

• the active system that processes the information present within short-term memory 

• Consists of three interrelated systems: A central executive that controls and coordinates the other two systems(visual and audital), the visuospatial “ Sketpad”, and a kind of auditory action or phonological loop. 

• Relating to the storage and manipulation of information

George Miller

• Wanted to know how much info humans can hold in STM at one time 

• How many files can fit on the desk? 

• Digit-Span test

• What is found is that everyone will get past the first two, some will make errors on the 6-digit span, about half will slip on the 7 digits, and very few will get past 9 

• Miller concluded that the capacity of STM- is about seven items or pieces of information, plus or minus two items, or from 5 to 9 

• MAGIC NUMBER 7 

Digit-Span test- Miller

Participants are asked to read a series of numbers and then asked to recall them in order, each series gets longer until they cannot recite it 

• Current research shows that it varies from person to person 

• If bits of info are combined into meaningful units or chunks, more information can be held in STM

Why Do You Think They Call it Short Term?

• Lasts about 12 to 30 seconds

• After memory seems to decay or disappear

• Mice suggest that in order to make new memories, old memories have to be erased 

Maintenance rehearsal

continuing to pay attention to the information to be held in memory 

 Long-term memory (LTM)

• The system into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently

• LTM seems to be unlimited for all practical purposes 

• LTM is encoded in a meaningful form

• The best way to encode is through elaborative rehearsal 

Duration

• There is a relatively permanent physical change in the brain itself when a memory is from 

• Memories may be available but not accessible 

• Only meaningful and important events and concepts are stored in long-lasting memory 

Rote Learning

•  another term for maintenance rehearsal- rotating the information in one’s head by saying it over and over again 

• This is not the best way to put info into LTM

Elaborative Rehearsal 

• Is a way of increasing the number of retrieval cues for information by connecting new information with something that is already well-known

• Ex. The French word Maison means house, so Maison sounds like mason, masons build houses

Nondeclarative (implicit) memory

• memories of things that people know how to do. 

• Knowing how to tie your shoes is implied 

• Not easily retrieved into conscious awareness 

• Memory for skills is called non-declarative memory or implicit memory 

Declarative (explicit) LTM

•  about all the things that people can know- the facts and information that make up knowledge 

• Memory for facts is called declarative memory  or explicit memory

Semantic & Episodic Memory- Explicit

• Semantic memory: a type of declarative memory that is general knowledge that anyone has the ability to know. Such as information taught in school. 

• Episodic memory: memory that is personal knowledge that each person has. It has an updated process. 

• Women may be better at retrieving episodic memories 

Long-Term Memory Organization - Semantic network mode

• assumes that information is stored in the brain in a connected fashion with concepts that are related to each other and stored physically closer 

Priming

occurs when experience with information or concepts can improve later performance 

• ex. if a child sees a bag of candy next to a red bench, they might begin looking for or thinking about candy the next time they see a bench.

Retrieval Cues

The more retrieval cues stored with a piece of information, the easier the retrieval of that information will be

Encoding Specificity

• the connection between surrounding and remembered information

• The tendency for memory of any kind of information to be improved if retrieval conditions are similar to the conditions under which the information was encoded.  

• These can be internal or external 

Context-dependent learning- Encoding Specificity

may refer to the physical surroundings a person is in when they are learning specific information 

Encoding Specificity: State-Dependent Learning 

 memories formed during a particular physiological or psychological; state will be easier to remember while in a similar state

Recall

memories are retrieved with few or no external cues, such as filling in the blank on an application form

• Asking where you were born 

• Essay, short answer, and fill-in-the-blank tests 

Recognition

involves looking at or hearing information and matching it to what is already in memory. Such as a word search

• Ability to match a piece of information or a stimulus to a stored image or fact 

• Ex. multiple-choice tests, matching, and true or false 

• Very strong for images, especially human faces 

• False positives occur when there is enough similarity between a stimulus that is not already in memory and one that is 

Serial Position effect

 information at the beginning or end of a list tends to be remembered more easily and accurately 

Primacy effect

• words at the very beginning of the list tend to be remembered better than those in the middle of the list 

• The first few words receive far more rehearsal time than the words in the middle 

Recency effect

last word or two just heard and is still in short-term memory and easy for retrieval 

Testing effect

• LTM is increased when students practice retrieving the information to be learned 

Automatic Encoding

seems to enter a permanent storage with little to no effort

Flashbulb memories

• memories of highly emotional events can often seen as vivid and detailed as if the person’s mind took a flash picture of the moment in time. 

• Emotional reactions stimulate the release of hormones that have been shown to enhance the form of LTM 

• The memory of highly stressful events such as experiencing a crime has been shown to be less accurate than other memories(Loftus)

Sir Frederic Barlett

• saw the process of memory as more similar to creating a story than reading one already written. 

• He viewed memory as a problem-solving activity in which the person tries to retrieve the particulars of some past event by using current knowledge 

Elizabeth Loftus

• provided evidence for constructive processing 

• Memories are built or reconstructed from the information stored away during encoding 

• Each time a memory is retrieved it may be altered or received in some way to include new information or to exclude details that may be left out in the new reconstruction 

 Hindsight bias

The tendency for people to falsely believe that they would have accurately predicted an outcome without having been told about it in advance

Memory Retrieval Problems -The Misinformation Effect 

• False memories created by a person being exposed to information after an event 

• This is why police investigators sometimes try to keep eyewitness to crimes or accidents away from each other 

• Can also be caused by a different format from the original event(Loftus with the Yield and Stop and the slide presentation of the traffic accident)

False memory Syndrome

• Creation of inaccurate or false memories through the suggestion of others, often while the person is under hypnosis 

• Harder to create than real ones

• The false memory at least has to be plausible 

• Loftus found that if given false feedback participants would development of false memories easily 

• Also, the person reporting such a memory matters

Hyperthymesia

has the ability to recall specific events

Adaptive forgetting

the idea that being able to suppress information that we no longer need makes it easier to remember what we do need 

mnemonist

a memory expert 

Hermann Ebbinghaus 1913

• He was the first to study forgetting 

• He created lists of nonsense syllables, they were pronounceable but meaningless 

• He memorized a list, waited a specific amount of time, and tried to retrieve the list graphing his results each time 

• The curve of forgetting- forgetting happens quickly within the first hour after learning the lists and then tapers off gradually 

• He found that it is good not to cram 

• Distributed practice- spacing out one’s study sessions 

 Reasons We Forget 

1. Encoding Failure 

2.  Memory Trace Decay Theory

3. Interference Theory 

 Memory Trace Decay Theory

• Is some physical change in the brain that occurs when a memory is formed decays over time as it is not being used 

• When talking about LTM the phrase disuse is used instead of “use it or lose it”

Interference Theory

• Other information interferes with you cant retrieve it 

• Proactive Interference: the tendency for older or previously learned material to interfere with the learning 

• Getting a new cell phone number 

• Retroactive Interference: when newer information interferes with the retrieval of older information
  

The Biological Bases of Memory 

• Nondeclarative memories seem to be stored in the cerebellum 

• STM are stored in the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe 

• Memories related to fear are stored in the amygdala 

• Sensory information appears to be temporarily stored in the thalamus and then heads to higher cortical areas of the brain  

• posterior cingulate cortex- involved in the formation of LTM 

• People with Alzheimer's have damage here 

The Biological Bases of Memory

• Semantic and episodic LTM are stored in the frontal and temporal lobes 

• Episodic retrieval seems to be partly a function of the posterior parietal cortex, located at the very back of the parietal lobe 

• Posterior cingulate cortex- above and toward the rear of the corpus callosum 

• Memory changes in many receptor sites. Changes in the number of receptor sites, changes in the sensitivity of the synapse through repeated stimulation (long-term potentiation), and changes in the dendrites and specifically in the proteins within the neurons 

• Six molecular mechanisms that change underlying synaptic plasticity and memory storage- cAMP, PKA, CRE, CREB-1, and CREB-2, CPEB

Consolidation

• The synaptic alteration, changes in neuronal structure, protein synthesis, and other changes that take place as a memory 

• May be short but also may take longer

Hippocampus

part of the brain that is responsible for the formation of new-long term declarative memories 

Retrograde Amnesia

• Loss of memory from the point of injury backward 

• The consolidation process, which was busy making the physical changes to allow new memories to be stored, gets disrupted and loses everything that was not already nearly “finished” 

• ECT- electroconvulsive therapy- a therapy for severe depression. One of the common side effects is the loss of memory, retrograde amnesia 

• May not permanent 

Anterograde Amnesia

• The loss of memories from the point of injury or illness forwards

• Have difficulty remembering anything new 

• Dementia 

Alzheimer’s Disease

• Most common type of dementia found in adults and the elderly

• 6th leading cause of death of people 65 and other 

• Anterograde amnesia 

• Retrograde amnesia also takes hold as old memories are erased 

• Acetyl coA- they are broken down 

• Genetically influenced

Infantile Amnesia

• Forgetting early memories from the first three years of life 

• Early memories tend to be implicit and are difficult to bring into consciousness 

• Explicit memory does not develop until the age of 2 

• Katherine Nelson: gives credit to social relationships that small children have with others. As children are able to talk about shared memories with adults, they begin to develop their autobiographical memory, the memory for events and facts related to one’s personal life story 

Personality & Character

• Personality: is the unique way in which each individual thinks, acts,  and feel throughout life 

• Character: refers to value judgments made about a person’s morals or ethical behavior 

Four traditional perspectives in personality

• Psychodynamic perspective: sigmund freud. Focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality. Heavy on biological causes of personality differences. 

• Behavioral perspective: focuses on the effect of the environment on behavior. Social cognitive theory, that interactions with others influence learning and personality 

• Humanistic perspective: focuses on the role of each person’s conscious life experiences and choices in personality development 

• Trait perspective: Trait theorists are concerned with the end result, the characteristics that make personality.

Freud’s Conception of Personality

• believed that the mind was divided into three parts: preconscious, conscious, and unconscious. 

• He believed that the unconscious mind was the most important determining factor in human behavior and personality 

Freud’s Divisions of the Personality

Id, Ego, and Superego

• Personality is divided into three parts: each existing at one or more levels of conscious awareness

• Id makes demands, and the superego puts restrictions on how those demands can be met, and the ego has to come up with a plan that will quiet the id but satisfy the superego 

Id

• the first and most primitive part of the personality, present in the infant. It is a completely unconscious, pleasure-seeking, amoral part of the personality that exists at birth, containing hunger, thirst, self-preservation, and sex 

• Want needs satisfied

• Pleasure principle: the desire for immediate gratification of needs with no regard for the consequences 

Ego: The Executive Director 

• Mostly conscious and is far more rational, logical, and cunning than the id 

• Works on the Reality principle- the need to satisfy the demands of the id only in ways that will not lead to negative consequences 

Superego: The moral Watchdog 

• Develops as preschool-aged children learn rules, customs, and expectations. 

• Contains the conscience- the part of the personality that makes people feel guilt, or moral anxiety when they do the wrong thing

Psychological defense mechanism

ways of dealing with anxiety through unconsciously distorting one’s perception of reality 

Stages of Personality Development - Psychosexual stages

• determined by the developing sexuality of the child 

• Conflicts that are not fully resolved can result in fixation, or getting stuck to some degree in a stage of development 

Oral Stage(First 18 Months) 

• The erogenous zone is the mouth 

• The conflict here is over weaning, taking the mother’s breast away from the child. 

• Weaning that occurs too soon or too late can result in too little or too much satisfaction of the child’s oral needs, resulting in activities and personality associated with an orally fixated adult personality 

Anal Stage(18 to 36 months)

• The erogenous zone moves from the mouth to the anus 

• Believed that children get pleasure from both withholding and releasing their feces at will 

• The main conflict is toilet training 

• Stimulates the development of ego 

• Anal exclusive personality- someone who sees messiness as a statement of personal control and who is somewhat destructive and hostile 

• Anal retentive personality- No mess, no punishment. As adults, they are stingy, stubborn, and excessively neat.

Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years)

• The erogenous zone shifts to the genitals 

• Castration anxiety- fear of losing the penis

• Penis envy 

• Oedipus complex- believed that boys develop both sexual attraction to their mothers and jealousy of their fathers 

• Electra complex- opposite with girls 

• If the child does not have a same-sex parent with whom yhey identify, or if the opposite sex parent encourages sexual attraction, fixation can occur 

• Boys will become mamas boys 

• Girls will look for older father figures to marry 

Latency Stage(6 years to Puberty) 

• Hidden of sexual feelings 

• From before children have pushed their sexual feelings into the unconscious mind as a defensive reaction. 

• Develop intellectually

Genital Stage(Puberty on)

• Focuses on sexual curiosity and attraction will become other adolescents, celebrities, and other objects of adoration

• Final stage

Carl Gustav Jung

•  disagreed with Freud about the nature of the unconscious mind 

• Believed the unconscious held more than just personal fears, urges, and memories

• There was not only a personal unconscious but a collective unconscious.

• Archetypes - a collective of universal human memories 

Alfred Adler

• disagreed with Freud over the importance of sexuality in personality development 

• People develop feelings of inferiority when comparing themselves to the more powerful, superior adults in their world 

• Driving force was superiority not pleasure 

• Defense mechanism of compensation, in which people try to overcome feelings of inferiority by striving to be superior in another area 

• Birth order also affected personality

Karen Horney

•  disagreed about the differences between males and females 

• She countered with womb envy 

• She focused on teh basic anxiety created in a child born into sych a bigger and more powerful than the child 

• Children whose parents gave them love, affection, and security would overcome this anxiety

• Others would develop neurotic personalities and maladaptive ways of dealing with relationships 

• Some more towards people becoming dependent while others move against people, becoming aggressive 

Social Cognitive learning theorists

emphasize the importance of both the influences of other people's behavior and of a person’s own experiences on learning, hold that observational learning, modeling, and other cognitive learning techniques lead to the formation of personality. 

Albert Bandura

• Albert Bandura- the social cognitive view: influence of external stimuli and response patterns but also by cognitive processes such as anticipating, judging, memory, and as well as learning through imitation of models 

• Reciprocal determinism- the relationship between behavior itself, the environment, and cognitive factors from earlier experiences 

• Self-efficacy- a person’s expectancy of how effective his or her efforts to accomplish a goal will be in any particular circumstance 

• People with high efficacy are more persistent and expect to succeed 

Julian Rotter

• Based on the basic principle of motivation derived from Thorndike’s law of effect 

• Viewed personality as a relatively stable set of  potential responses to various situations 

• Locus of control- the tendency for people to assume they either have control or do not have control over events and consequences in their lives 

• Internal locus- people who assume their own actions and decisions directly affect the consequences they experience 

• External locus- people who assume their loves are more controlled by power others, luck, or fate 

• Expectancy- feeling that a particular behavior will lead to a reinforcing consequence

• Reinforcement value- refers to an individual’s preference for a particular reinforce over all other possible reinforcing consequences 

Carl Rogers and the Humanistic Perspective 

• Led by psychologists such as Carol Rogers and Abraham Maslow 

• Human beings are striving to fulfill their innate capacities and capabilities and to become everything their genetic potential will allow them to become- Self-actualizing tendency 

• Important in human self-actualization is the development of an image of oneself 

• Self-concept is based on what people are told by others and how the sense of self is reflected

Real and Ideal Self

• Real self: one’s actual perception of characteristics, traits, and abilities that form the basis of the striving for self–actualization 

• Ideal self: the perception of what one should be or would like to be. It primarily comes from important people 

• Rogers believes that when the real and ideal self are very close or similar to each other, people feel competent and capable

• It will likely match if they aren't too apart 

• When a person has a realistic view of the real self and the ideal self is attainable 

Conditional and Unconditional Positive Regard

• Positive regard: warmth, affection, love, and respect that comes from significant others 

• It is vital to cope with stress and to strive to achieve self-actualization 

• Unconditional positive regard: love, affection, and respect with no strings attached, is necessary for people to be able to explore fully all that they can achieve and become 

• Conditional positive regard: love, affection, respect, and warmth that depend on doing what those people want. 

• Fully functioning people are in touch with their own feelings and abilities and are able to trust their innermost burgers and intuitions 

• To become fully functioning, a person needs unconditional positive regard 

• Only a fully functioning person can go through the process of self-actualized

Thoughts on Humanistic View of Personality 

• It ignores the more negative aspects of human nature 

• Some aspects are difficult to test scientifically and it has been suggested this viewpoint could be considered more a philosophical view of human behavior than a psychological explanation 

• Has helped develop therapies designed to promote self-growth 

• The premises of positive psychology have their roots in humanistic psychology

 Current Thoughts on the Behavioral and Social Cognitive Learning Views 

• The classical theory does not take mental processes into account when explaining behavior, nor does it give weight to social influences on learning

 Current Thoughts on Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective 

• He did no experiments 

• Formed his own interpretations to fit his ideas 

Trait theories

• are less concerned with the explanation for personality development and changing personality than they are with describing personality and predicting behavior  based on that description 

• Trait: a consistent, eduring way of thinking, feeling, or behaving, and trait theories attempt to describe personality in terms of a person’s traits 

Gordon Allport

• Allport believed these traits were wired into the nervous system to guide one’s behavior across many different situations and that each person’s constellation of traits was unique 

• Narrowed down to 200 traits

Raymond Cattell

• Two types of traits: surface traits and source traits 

• Surface traits: representing the personality characteristics easily seen by other people 

• Source traits: more basic traits that underline surface traits related to the more basic source of trait introversion- a tendency to withdraw from excessive stimulation

• Cattell identified 16 source traits 

• He later determined there might be another 7 

• He used factor analysis- a statistical technique that looks for grouping and commonalities in numerical data 

• He developed the Sixteen Personality Factor 16PF questionnaire 

Five-factor model -They represent the core description of human personality 

• OCEAN 

• Openness: a person’s willingness to try new things and be open to new experiences. People who don’t like change would score low on openness 

• Conscientiousness: a person’s organization and motivation. People who score high in this dimension are those who are careful about being placed on time and careful with belonging as well. 

• Extraversion: all people could be divided into extraverts and introverts 

• Agreeableness: refers to the basic emotional style of a person. On a high scale, they are easygoing, friendly, and pleasant. On the low scale, they are grumpy, crabby, and hard to get along with. 

• Neuroticism: refers to emotional instability or stability. People who are excessively worried, overanxious, and moody would score high. Those who are calm would score low 

Robert McCrae and Paul Cost

• proposed that these five traits are not interdependent. 

• This model has been used for geographical psychology 

• There is a great variety of combinations

Walter Mischel 

• Trait-situation interaction: in which the particular circumstances of any given situation are assumed to influence the way in which a trait is expressed 

• Ex. an outgoing extravert, might laugh, talk to strangers, and tell jokes. That same person at a funeral will still talk to people but the jokes and laughter are less likely to occur 

• Openness is linked to intellect 

 Current Thoughts on the Trait Perspective 

• Cross-cultural perspective, persistent, heritable traits, or basic tendencies, impact an individual’s characteristics and adaptations such as motives, goals, plans, skills, interests, attributes, and relationships 

• Extraversion and Neuroticism- tend to decline over life span 

• Agreeableness and Conscientiousness tend to increase 

• Openness typically rises in adolescence and declines later in childhood 

Behavioral genetics

the study of just how much of an individual’s personality is due to inherited traits 

Twin Studies

• James Arthur Springer and James Edwards Lewis were twins who were separated at birth 

• They were studied by the University of Minnesota by Thomas Bouchard 

• They were remarkably similar

• They were raised in similar environments 

• It was revealed that identical twins are more similar in intelligence, leadership abilities, the tendency to follow rules, to uphold traditional cultural expectations. 

• They are also alike in regard to nurturance, empathy, assertiveness, and aggressiveness 

• Genetics account for most of these similarities 

Genetic nurture

the genetics of a child’s parents affect the family and child’s environment