Cognition Chapter 6

Memory

A family of processes involved in encoding, storing, and retrieving (i.e., recalling or recognizing) information about our experience of the world

Ex: Remembering something from seconds ago or from years ago

Short-term memory

Information stored for a short duration, which fades after several seconds if not actively attended to or transferred into long-term memory

Ex: Forgetting new people’s names by the end of a party conversation

Long-term memory

The long-term storage of information, which can stretch back decades

Ex: A warehouse of filing cabinets: your kindergarten teacher’s name

Mnemonists

“Memory athletes” who perform astonishing feats of information retention

Ex: Ben Pridmore memorized 28 shuffled decks in an hour; Wang Feng memorized 2,660 numbers

Method of loci

A “memory palace”: imagining walking through a familiar space and placing different pieces of information in each room, with each room a cue

Ex: Nelson Dellis; a memory athletes show more hippocampal, retrosplenial, and parietal activity

Encode

To mentally file information away where you can later access it

Ex: A multistage process, not a single step

Sensory memory

A highly detailed but short-lived impression of sensory information

Ex: A detailed image persisting for a fraction of a second after a stimulus

Iconic memory

In the visual domain, the persisting sensory memory

Ex: Sperling (1960): ~4 items reported on whole report, but a tone cue revealed ~75% persisted

Rehearsal

Repeating the information to themselves over and over again

Ex: Repeating an address while racing to find a pen, and losing part of it

Google effect

When people expect to access information online, memory for that information is lowered

Ex: Trivia typed into a computer was remembered worse when people thought it was being saved

Metamemory

Understanding of how our own memory works (more broadly, metacognition)

Ex: Improves over childhood development

Chunking

Organizing smaller bits of information into larger, meaningful combinations

Ex: 1, 4, 9, 2, 1, 7, 7, 6… → 1492, 1776, 1812, 1984; child chess experts beat adult novices on chess positions

Depth of encoding

Paying attention to meanings and functions versus superficial features

Ex: Craik & Tulving (1975): typeface < rhyme < category fit

Elaboration

Making links between new material and knowledge already in long-term memory

Ex: Judging whether an item would be useful if lost in the woods

Self-reference effect

Thinking of ways material is relevant to you or your own interests improves memory

Ex: Helps even people with memory impairment from neurological damage

Self-imagining

Imagining something from a personal perspective

Ex: “Typewriter-attic”: imagine yourself tying in an attic; better than other imagery strategies

Hierarchical organization

A meaningful network of associations in which items are linked to increasingly global categories

Ex: 13 famous names → artists/political figures → actors, painters, singers; USA, Europe, Africa

Spacing effect

people remember material better when they space short study sessions apart

Distributed practice

Study sessions spread out over time

Ex: Ebbinghaus retained more with distributed sessions

Massed practice

Clustering an equivalent period of study into a single session

Ex: Cramming the night before the exam

Retrieval

The act of accessing memories

Ex: Analogous to opening a saved file, but memory is volatile

Testing effect

Practice retrieving information leads to better retention than repeated studying (“retrieval practice”)

Ex: Restudying looked better at 5 minutes, but self-testing was better at 2 days and a week

Generation effect

Memory is enhanced for items a person has generated versus items simply memorized

Ex: Completing “fr_ _ nd” beat rereading; using the fragment as a retrieval cue was better still

Retrieval cues

Clues in the environment or in our stored representations of experiences

Ex: The learning context or mood serving as a cue

Context-dependent memory

Improved memory when the retrieval context matches the learning context

Ex: Godden & Baddeley (1975): divers recalled best where they learned (underwater or on land)

State-dependent memory

memory is enhanced when internal states at retrieval match those at encoding

Ex: Alcohol or marijuana at study and again at test

Mood-dependent memory

A form of state-dependent memory where mood at retrieval matches mood at encoding

Ex: Bower: happy or sad mood induced by hypnosis

Von Restorff effect

Better memory for items with particular uniqueness on a list (the isolation effect)

Ex: A unique item on a list stands out; a confound in See for Yourself 6.1

Autobiographical memory

Remembering events in our lives; tied to the self, including personal narratives and beliefs

Ex: Asian Americans primed with an American identity gave more self-focused memories

Infantile amnesia

The inability to remember the earliest years of life (sparse before age 3-4)

Ex: Possibly due to late development of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex

Hyperthymestic syndrome

Also “highly superior autobiographical memory”: very rare, incredibly strong memories of even mundane events

Ex: Jill Price remembers every day since 1980 (“a burden”); her digit memory is normal

Flashbulb memories

Vivid memories associated with particularly emotional events (high surprise and high emotional arousal)

Ex: Challenger (Neisser & Harsch): high confidence but inaccurate 2 ½ years later

Retrograde memory enhancement

Learning material just before emotions are triggered makes it easier to remember

Ex: An emotional film clip after a lecture → better test results 2 weeks later

Memory consolidation

The solidification of memories over time

Ex: Epinephrine (adrenaline) after viewing pictures → more recalled a week later

False memories

Remembrance of things that may never have happened

Ex: Loftus & Pickrell’s lost-in-the-mall event

Deese/Roediger-McDermott effect

The tendency to “remember” items that didn’t appear but are meaningfully related to items in the list

Ex: Listed: nurse, sick, hospital…→ “doctor”; bed rest, tired… → “sleep”

Transience

The forgetting of information over time

Ex: Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve

Absent-mindedness

The failure to encode due to inattention

Ex: Yo-Yo Ma leaving his $2.5M cello in a taxi trunk

Blocking

The feeling of an impediment standing in the way of successful retrieval; the inability to access memories that are intact and encoded

Ex: Tip-of-the-tongue states

Misattribution

The failure to remember the source of a memory

Ex: George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”

Suggestibility

The tendency to reshape one’s memory according to misleading external information

Ex: “Smashed” vs. “hit”

Bias

The tendency to reshape memory according to one’s knowledge, beliefs, or feelings

Ex: Remembering the past through “rose-colored lenses”

Persistence

The intrusion of memories that we wish we could forget

Ex: Jill Price; PTSD flashbacks

Forgetting curve

An estimate of the rate at which information fades from memory

Ex: Forgetting is faster in the first hour, then levels off

Savings measure

How much less you would need to study material the second time, compared with the first, to learn it perfectly

Ex: 100 cycles at first, 80 later = 20% saved

Divided-attention tasks

Also called dual-task experiments: doing two tasks at once, to stimulate real-world distraction

Ex: Counting backward by three from 457 while viewing words; impaired encoding

Weapon focus

Failing to process other things because attention is focused on a threatening weapon

Ex: A customer pointing a gun at a cashier vs. handing over a check

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

being unable to bring a word to mind despite recalling its syllable count, stress pattern, and several letters

Ex: “Catacombs”; the capital of Denmark

Interference

When memories compete with each other and make it harder to recall what you are trying to recall

Ex: CAT is paired with both CUP and MAP

A-B, A-C learning paradigm

Learn A-B (CAT-CUP), then A-C (CAT-MAP), D-E (BAT-HAM), or nothing; then test memory

Ex: Recall of A-B is worse after learning A-C than after D-E or nothing

Retroactive interference

Memory (for A-B) impaired by something that happened later (A-C)

Ex: Learning CAT-MAP hurts CAT-CUP

Proactive interference

Memory (for A-C) impaired by something that happened earlier (A-B)

Ex: earlier CAT-CUP hurts recall of CAT-MAP

Fan effect

Retrieval depends on the number of elements associated with the same fact; more associations (fan size) means greater interference

Ex: “The fireman/lawyer/dogwalker is in the park”: more people in the park → slower recognition

retrieval-induced forgetting

Retrieval of target memories causes unselected memories to be lost (also retrieval induced inhibition)

Ex: Practicing orange, nectarine, pineapple harms banana, cantaloupe, lemon (worse than Drinks)

Source monitoring

Your ability to keep track of where your memory came from

Ex: Did you actually lock the door, or only imagine it?

Source misattribution

Confusions about the sources of our memories

Ex: Harrison’s tune resembled “He’s So Fine”; “Sebastian Weisdorf” mistaken as famous

Reality monitoring

Johnson’s framework: people often have difficulty distinguishing memories of external events from memories of internally generated information

Ex: Johnson & Raye

Source confusion

Difficulty distinguishing memories of external events from those of internally generated information

Ex: A magnifying glass shown vs. lollipop imagined

Memory suggestibility

The altering of memory through leading questions and cues

Ex: Broken glass “remembered” after “smashed”; 800+ military personnel in a mock POW camp

Schemas

Knowledge or expectations about an event, used to construct memory

Ex: Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts: “seal hunting” became a “sailing expedition”

Consistency bias

remembering the impact of events through the lens of their impact on us today

Ex: Remembering a breakup as less painful because you’ve healed

Intrusive memories

Also called flashbacks: unwanted intrusions of traumatic memories into daily life

Ex: PTSD; research focus 6.2’s beta-blocker study

Simultaneous lineup

Witnesses view several people side by side and try to identify the suspect

Ex: Encourages relative judgments (picking the closest match, even if the culprit isn’t present)

Sequential lineup

Witnesses decide about each lineup member before moving on to the next

Ex: Reduces false identifications, especially double-blind (not universally agreed)

Double-blind lineup

A lineup in which the officers overseeing it don’t know who the true suspect is

Ex: Prevents involuntary influence on witnesses

Cognitive interview

An interview system based on known memory mechanisms: slow rate, mostly open-ended questions encouraging free recall

Ex: 35-75% more information and fewer incorrect recollections than standard police interviews