Process of Remembering and Forgetting

What are retrieval cues?

Stimuli aiding in the retrieval of memories

What are examples of retrieval cues?

External → environmental factors, sensory experiences (e.g. being in same location where you first learned something, familiar sights, smells, tastes)

Internal → emotional or physical state that matches the one present when infomration was originally learned (e.g. feeling happy when learning somehting → more likely to remember it when happy)

What are methods used to assess how much information has been retained?

Recall

Recognition

Relearning

What is Recall?

Te process of retrieving information from LTM with limited to no retrieval cues to assist the process

What are types of recall?

Free recall

Serial Recall

Cued Recall

What is free recall?

reproducing as much information as possible in no particular order without a cue

(e.g random list of words being remembered and after a specifci time, repeating them)

rely on free recall trying to retrieve bits of information about an entire memory or mixed of episodic or semantic memory, listing teachers you remember from primary school

What is serial recall

Involves reproducing information in the order in which it was presented without retrieval cues

Allows us to recall events and other information chronologically, which helps give meaning or logic to info

used to fill in missing words in a sentence

What is cued recall?

Involves the use of specific prompts or ‘‘cues’’ to aid retrieval and reproduce the required information

More specific → more likely to locate and retrieve sought after information from LTM

• learning a list of words

• providing participants with first letter of each word to assist retrieval

• asking participants to remember each word

What is recognition?

The ability to identify previously stored information by matching current stimuli with stored memories

examples of tests of recognition → shown a list of students and asked who’s in your class, multiple choice quiz

information may be present and requires us to judge if we have seen/experienced this before

We are more likely to retrieve information using the recognition method than recall

Why is recognition superior to recall

•Recognition tests of memory are ‘easier’ because they provide retrieval cues that serve as prompts or reminders of information that could not otherwise be recalled.

alternatives do not always provide retrieval cues but can be distracters such as a police line-up where individuals of similar appearance stand side by side. 

OR when choices in a multiple-choice test are very similar and you get confused

What are distractors?

False items that are included with the items to be recognised

if distractor is similar to correct item, recognition may be poor or unreliable.

What are false positives?

An incorrect sense of recognition that occurs when you are presented with a group of incorrect items and identify one as correct

selection appears correct because it resembles the correct item more than the other items do

What is re-learning?

Learning something that has been previously learnt to measure the amount of information retained from the original learning

Relearning takes less time to learn than it did originally

What are the steps of relearning in memory processes?

Initial learning

Forgetting

Relearning

Enhanced retention

What is initial learning?

The first exposure to information where it is encoded into memory

What is forgetting?

The gradual loss of information over time if not reinforced or accessed

What is relearning?

The process of learning previously forgotten information. This is often faster than initial learning, demonstrating that some memory traces persist even after apparent forgetting.

What is enhanced retention

Repeated relearning can lead to stronger, more durable memories, highlighting the importance of spaced repetition in learning.

What is the name of the theory?

Levels of Processing Model of Memory

Craik + Lockhart, 1972

Levels of Processing Model of Memory Craik + Lockhart, 1972

Proposed that level or depth at which we process information during leraning determines how well it is stored in the long term memory

Suggested memories are best encoded, organised and stored in LTM semantically than if info was encoded acoustically or visually

if meaning is processed in learning, then LTM will be better

suggested levels of processing → Deep and shallow processing

Structural/shallow processing

Encode the physical qualities/appearance

Emphasises physical structure of the stimulus

e.g. noticing font or capitalisation

Phonological/intermediate processing

emphasises what a word sounds like

encode sound/auditory

does the word rhyme with weight?

Semantic/deep processing

Encode meaning and associate it with existing knowledge

emphasises the meaning of verbal input

e.g. would word fit in sentence “he met a ____ on the street”

What is the name of the study?

Depth of processing and retention of words in episodic memory Craik + Tulving, 1975

Aim of study

To determine the impact that levels of processing have on recall of memory

Participants

60 male and female students from Uni of toronto

convenience sampling was utilised as both Craik and Tulving were based at the university from which the participants studied

Materials?

A list of 60 words, set of 3 questions, list of 180 words incorporated the original 60 words

Design

IV was type of encoding used to memorise list of words (Structural encoding, phonemic encoding and semantic encoding)

DV was number of words recalled

Procedure

Participants were told they were gonna be in a study testing perception

randomly allocated into one of three conditions (Structural encoding, phonemic encoding and semantic encoding)

all participants were provided with a list of 60 words and were required to answer on 10 yes and 10 no questions per level, presented auditory in random order

Two seconds later, a word appeared for 200 milliseconds, and they responded with “yes”/ “no” keys

stE: is the word in capital or lower case?

phE: Does the word rhyme with..?

seE: Does the word go with this sentence

A recognition test followed with 60 original words and 120 distractors.

Key findings or processing

Participants in semantic encoding condition recalled more words than participants in the phonetic or structural encoding conditions, as displayed in the graph

Words that were semantically encoded via elaborative rehearsal and deep processing led to higher recall accuracy

Words that were structurally and phonemically encoded underwent shallow processing and less accurate recall

Response latencies increased with level of processing (case < rhyme < sentence), and recognition accuracy increased with processing depth: “yes” responses were correctly recognised 15% for case identification and 81% for sentence conditions; “no” responses were recognised 19% and 49% respectively

Contribution of study to psycyh

empirical evidence proved as result of study enabled other reesearchers to run similar experiments and not allow for reliability to be assessed but to additionally demonstrate high reliability

limitations of study

Deception was used

Specific details for study debriefs not availbale, so unkown if they were told of the deception and explained the reason for its use

unclear whether it is depth of processing that improves retrieval of information from LTM or if it is the fact that greater effort is used during encoding