psych cognitive module - day 1

Encoding

A process of taking external stimuli and changing it into codes that are going to be in your brain for later retrieval

What is true about encoding

You are encoding your interpretation of the events

Storage

Putting the information that you encode into your brain to hold it there until you later need that information

Engram (imaginary idea)

Mostly imaginary idea where there is a singular spot in a brain where each memory is stored (not really how our memory works but what people thought our memory did for a long time)

Engram (true definition)

They way that multiple areas of the brain are going to react and respond which are related to a specific memory (a pattern of activation)

Retrieval

You are pulling the memory out of storage for use

Cues (a part of retrieval)

Meant to guide your memorial search

Levels of processing

• structural

• Phonemic

• Semantic

• Organizational

What is true about your level of processing

The deeper the level of processing the better your memory is going to be

Structural

Focused on the visual components of a piece of information

What lobe does structural processing use

Your occipital lobe

Phonemic processing

Focused on the sound of the word

What lobe does phonemic processing use

The temporal lobe

What is true about phonemic processing in terms of depth

Little deeper than structural processing but still shallow

Semantic processing

Focus on the meaning of the word

What is true about semantic processing in terms of depth

You start to see deeper processing

What lobe does semantic processing use

The frontal lobe

Organizational processing

How different stimuli is going to fit together (connect this piece of stimuli to other pieces of stimuli) - could be information you already encoded

What lobe does organizational processing use

The frontal lobe

What lobe is involved in organizational processing to a degree

The temporal lobe

What is true about organizational and semantic processing with each other

There is not much of a statistical different between organizational and semantic processing

Craik and Tulving, 1972

Had participants examine words structurally, phonemically, and semantically, and then later tested them on their memory.

Results: showed that deeper levels of processing seem to help when it comes to to memory because people who examined the words semantically recalled the most amount of words)

Effortful processing

Conscious processing where you are putting in work and using cognitive resources in order to do a deeper level of processing

Automatic processing

Without our conscious awareness and does not involve conscious work

What is true about effortful processing

Effortful processing typically leads to better memory but it takes more time and effort but automatic is worse and more efficient

Mnemonics

Strategies during encoding to improve subsequent retrieval

The role of interpretation

When we can interpret things through the connection component its going to make it easier to remember (depends on the context in which encoding happened)

Encoding specificity principle

Cues that are present during encoding serve as the best cues during retrieval (if you hear something auditorily you are most likely to recall something when you hear it auditorily)

Elaboration

Where you are adding information to a stimuli in order to create more codes and cues for later retrieval (gives your memory more things to cling onto)

Dual coding theory

It’s useful at encoding to put multiple codes onto a stimuli because if one code fails the other could succeed (why writing things down after hearing them could be better for your memory)

Self referent coding

One of the things we care about the most is ourselves so if we can someway connect the stimuli we are trying remember to ourselves we are going to remember the stimuli a lot better

Cocktail party phenomenon

One of the things most related to yourself is your name so when you are in a loud environment you can sometimes hear your name in a conversation that you are not actively involved in

Motivation to remember

When you dramatically increase your motivation to remember it you are more likely to remember

Peg words

Where you are using some sort of concrete object to pair with an item that you have to remember

Method of loci

Where you are going to take a location that you are very familiar with and you are going to place the items that you need to remember along a path in that location (the routine that a lot of memory champions use)

Chunking

Take a large amount of information and chunk units together

Hierarchies

Organize the information you are trying to remember and create subcategories for that information

Spacing/testing effect

The best way to remember information is to spaced out your encoding and practice retrieval

sensory memory

Sensory information that you have put into this bin (short duration medium capacity)

Short term memory

Longer duration than sensory but still short and very small capacity (short duration small capacity)

Miller 7 +- 2

The majority of the population can hold between 5 and 9 pieces of information in their short term memory

Long term memory

Longest lasting of the three bins and as far as we know there is no limit as to how long information can last and the capacity of long term memory (long duration large capacity)

What are the components of long term memory?

• procedural memory

• Declarative memory

Procedural memory (part of long term memory)

Muscle memory so the memory for how your muscles achieve some specific task

Positive transfer

The mastery of one task is going to help in the mastery of another task

Negative transfer

The mastery of one task if going to inhibit the mastery of another task

Declarative memory (part of long term memory)

Specific memory that you are seeking out and that you are able to recall

Semantic memory

Memory for facts

Episodic memory

Memory for events

Prospective memory

Remembering to be something in the future (hard because you are trying to create a memory for something that hasn’t occurred yet)

Retrospective memory

Memory for anything that has happened in the past

Autobiographical memory

Blending of semantic information about yourself and episodic memory for events that you have experienced

HSAM

Highly superior autobiographical memory

What happened with hsam?

People who you can ask about any day in their life and they can tell you information about that day (extremely rare and not necessarily a good thing)

Working memory

Any memory that we are actively using which is going to be stored in the short term memory bin

Alan baddeley

He replaced the old idea with short term memory as a storage box with a dynamic multi component model that explains how we actively process and store information in real time

Maintenance rehearsal

Trying to keep information in short term memory without doing any kind of change to the information

Elaborating rehearsal

Working with the memory to make it more complex and more memorable (changing the memory in some way usually adding on to it)

Visuospatial sketchpad

Work on visual and spatial information

Phonological loop

For more auditory or language based information (reading would still be phonological loop because your processing it based on the meaning which is still using language)

Central executive

Working to connect the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop as well as determine where to put your resources and it will incorporate the episodic buffer

Episodic buffer

Keep things in temporal order (you must know the order)

When do we see the best working memory?

Young adult age

Benefits to better working memory

Better reading comprehension, logic, score better on intelligence test, better at following covid regulations

Consolidation

The process of taking information from short term memory and turning it into long term stable memory

Hippocampus

Seems to be critical for the transfer of information from short term to long term memory

REM sleep

Tends to be where we are doing a lot of consolidation

Reconsolidation

The process of putting information that was previously in long term memory that was recalled into short term memory back into long term memory

What happens when we recall a memory?

It opens our mind to change