Short term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly before the information is stored or forgotten

Long term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

Working Memory Model

• Actively manipulates and processes information

• Actively engages with stored information

• Involves multiple components (visual imagery, rehearsal, and an executive function that directs attention and coordinates actions)

• Used for mainly complex cognitive tasks (learning, decision-making, problem solving) 

Improving Working Memory

Breaking down tasks, memory aids like lists or mnemonics, rehearsal, chunking information into smaller sets, reduce distractions, connecting new information

Visuospatial Sketchpad

• Mind’s eye

• Handles visual images and spatial information

Central Executive

• Acts like a manager 

• Deciding what to focus on

• Deals with mental arithmetic and problem solving 

Phonological Loop

• Deals with spoken and written words

• Has two parts

  • Inner ear: briefly holds what you hear for 1 to 2 seconds

  • Inner voice: repeats words or sounds in your mind to help you remember 

Episodic Buffer 

• Mental connector

• Brings together information from different sources to help you piece together completes stories or experiences

• Links to long term memory

Levels of Processing

• Structural → Phonetic → Semantics

• (Surface level) to (hearing) to (understanding) 

• Most effective for recall

Retrograde Amensia

• inability to recall past memories before an injury

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to form new memories after an injury

Serial Position effects

• Tendency to recall the first and last items in a list

• Forgetting the middle ones

• Primary effect: Early items get more rehearsal and move to long-term memory

• Recency effect: Final items remain in short term memory

 Ebbighausen’s forgetting curve

• How we rapidly lose information overtime unless we review it

• Steepest drop happens soon after learning

Why do we forget? 

• Brains actively prune unused information

• Neural connections weaken over time

• New information interferes with old information

• Lack cues to access information (retrieval failure)

Retrieval cues

stimuli or reminders that help us remember stored information from long-term memory

• Work best when in the same mood or context during the encoding of the memory
  

Proactive interference

Old information blocks new information

Retroactive Interference

New information blocks the old information 

Misinformation effect

• when exposure to misleading post-event information alters or creates false memories of an original event, making memory unreliable and malleable

Implicit memory

• Implicit memory is unconscious learning of skills (procedural) and habits

Explicit memory

• explicit memory is conscious recall of facts (semantic) and events (episodic)

Processing memory

encoding —> storage —> retrieval

Semantic memory

• Recall words, concepts, or numbers, which is essential for the use and understanding of language.

• Long-term memory

Episodic memory

• Mental diary

• Recalling specific conscious past events 

Procedural Effortful processing

• conscious, attentive work needed to learn or strengthen skills and habits

Superior autobiographical memory 

• Remembering without needing to put in effort

Prospective memory

Ability to remember a planned action or intention at a future time

Maintenance rehearsal

Memory technique involving the simple repetition recirculation of information (Rehearsing)

Elaborative rehearsal

Link new information to existing information to understand/remember

Infantile amnesia

Universal inability to recall episodic memories at the beginning of birth