Ch.8 Memory pt.2

Traumatic Brain Injury

skull makes sudden collision with another object (bounces around interior of skull)

• Frontal/temporal loves

Amnesia

loss of memory due to brian injury/trauma

Anterograde amnesia

loss of memory for events after injury

• Memory before injury intact

• EX: hippocampus man

Retrograde amnesia

loss of memory for events before injury

• Old, or retro, memories lost

• Ex: My father was in a nearly fatal car accident when he was in high school – his memories for the day it happened end at breakfast.

Construction vs Reconstruction

C: formation of new memories

R: process of retrieving old memories

Eyewitness Misidentification

eyewitnesses often very confident

• Confidence unrelated to accuracy

• Overwhelming contributor to wrongful convictions later overturned w/ DNA

Misinformation Effect Paradigm

incorporating misleading info into one’s memory of an event

• Ex: In one study, researchers showed students a film of an automobile accident and then asked them how fast the white sports car was going when it passed a barn (Loftus, 1975). Although there was no barn in the film, 17 percent of the students mentioned the barn in their answer.

Encoding Failure

info never made it into long-term memory in the first place

• Ex: What color shirt was the professor wearing last class?

Transience

accessibility of memory decrease over time

• Storage decay

Storage Decay

decay theory suggests that over time, these memory traces begin to fade and disappear. If information is not retrieved and rehearsed, it will eventually be lost.

• Ex: Forgetting the layout of your high school

Absentmindness

forgetting caused by lapses in attention

• Ex: Forgetting why you walked into a room

Blocking

accessibility of info is temporarily blocked

• Keep in mind – a good cue for one person may not be a good cue for another person.

• Ex: I’m going to try to get you to remember an actor’s name, based on movies he was in

Tip of tongue experience

feel certain info is stored in memory, but unable to retrieve it

Misattribution/Source Amnesia/Source Misattribution

people can forget when, where and how they obtained it

• Ex: Maybe your friend told you that apples are bad for you because they are high in fat. You later recall the fact, and wonder how you learned about it. You conclude that you learned it from TV or the newspaper article.

• Great obstacles in legal cases to separate facts from imagined

Bias

memories distorted by current belief system

• Ex: We may reconstruct a memory to reflect our current beliefs about politics

Persistence

inability to forget undesirable memories

• Ex: Being haunted by a traumatic event

Inference

some memories interfere with other memories

• More likely when info is similar

Proactive Interference

old memory makes it more difficult to remember a new memory

• Ex: I moved from Alabama back to Louisiana a few years ago. For the longest time, I kept using my old zip code when filling out forms

Retroactive interference

new memory interferes with old memory

• Ex: Now that I’ve been back in Louisiana for a while, I can’t remember my zip code from Alabama!

Motivated Forgetting

Forgetting to protect from emotional distress or maintain positive self-image

• Sometimes, we may actively work to forget memories, especially those of traumatic or disturbing events or experiences

• Suppression + Repression

Suppression

Motivated Forgetting

conscious form; memory is still there just trying not to think of it

• Ex: Don’t think of a pink elephant

Repression

Motivated Forgetting

unconscious; memory is gone

• Memories are painful or traumatic life events are far less likely to be remembered, discussed or rehearsed

• Ex: Not remembering childhood abuse

Chunking

grouping individual units of info into larger units based on meaning

• work when they are personally meaningful. If you don’t understand the grouping, it’s not a good chunk.

Elaborative Rehearsal

think about meaning of new info and relate it to info already in memory

• Ex: Learning a new idea in psychology, and relating it to your own previous experience

Mnemonic Devices

memory aids, esp. Those that use vivid imagery/organized devices

• Ex: The Method of Loci

Spacing Effect

tendency for distributed study/practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study/practice

Massed Practice

Trying to learn/practice in one big chunk of time

• Ex: Cramming all night before an exam. You get tired, your attention wanders, and you are overconfident in your learning

Distributed (Spaced Practice)

encoding in several instances spread out over time

• Ex: Studying a little today, then studying again tomorrow. This type of practice takes more initiative and discipline, but definitely results in better learning

How to study effectively (7)

1. Use elaborative rehearsal

2. Apply self-ref effect

3. Dont forget forgetting curve

4. Rehearse

5. Keep moving

6. Sleep

7. Mnemonic devices

Neurogenesis

the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain known to play a role in memory and learning