Psyc 100 Module 8

What is memory?

• Is recalling past events and past learning by means of encoding, storage, and retrieval

Three processes of memory

• Encoding

• Storage

• Retrieval

Encoding

• getting information into memory in the first place

Storage

• Retaining memories for future use

Retrieval

• Recapturing memories when we need them

Information Processing Model

• Information passes through three memory stores during encoding, storage, and retrieval

Parallel Distributed Processing Model

• Information is represented in the brain as a pattern of activation across entire neural networks

Sensory memory

• what we see (iconic memory)

• What we hear (echoic memory)

  • Memory involving detailed, brief sensory images or sounds retained for a brief period of time

Working (short-term) memory

• Holds information for 30 seconds, capacity is 5-9 items

• A short term memory store for information you are thinking about right now

Long term memory

• Stories information forever (essentially)

Parallel Distributed-Processing (connectionist) model

• Memories are stored in a network of associations throughout our brains

  • Contrast with the IPM model of memory that says that material is processed and remembered in stages

  • It’s a subtle difference but it has implications for understanding how memories are formed and later recalled

How do we get information into memory?

• To get information into long term memory, you need to pay attention to it and encode it.

  • Two ways to encode

    • automatic processing

    • effortful processing

Automatic processing

• When you remember something without much conscious awareness or effort

• Often used for remembering matters of time, space and frequency

  • e.g. we can remember the path from our front door to our bedroom, we remember where things are in relation to us

Effortful processing

• When you remember something with careful attention and conscious effort

• Used for a lot of other stuff that we want to remember

  • e.g., studying for class, remembering someone’s name or phone number, etc.

Attention vs Awareness

• To encode anything into memory using either type of processing, we need to pay attention to it

• But we are only aware of it during effortful processing

Rehearsal

• Consciously repeating information to ensure it is encoded

Long term memory

• All of the information we have gathered that is available for use, such as acquired skills, people we know, and past feelings

Spaced practice effort

• Facilitates moving working memories into long-term memory by rehearsing over time

Phonological

• Encoding based on sound

Visual

• Encoding based on how the information looks

  • People with amazing visual encoding skills have eidetic (photographic) memory

Semantic

• Encoding based on the meaning of the information

Understand

• We remember things better when we can understand what it means

  • Rote memorization (e.g., just memorizing a definition without knowing how it relates to anything else) has limited effectiveness

Elaborate

• The more we can elaborate (or expand) on the meaning and make the information personally relevant, the better we remember it

Mnemonic devices

• techniques used to increase meaningfulness of information to make it more memorable

Chunking

• group bits of information together

  • e.g., remembering phone numbers

Schemas

• organize new information according to the categories created by previous experience and learning

PQRST method

• Preview

• Question

• Read

• Self recitation

• Test

Best methods of effortful encoding

• PQRST method

• chunking

• schemas

• Mnemonic devices

• elaborate

• understand

Storage limits of memory

• Once information enters working memory, it can be stored for only a limited period of time (about 30 sec). This kind of memory is either passed on to long-term memory of lost

• Memory span = max. number of items that can be recalled in the correct order

Types of Long term memories

• Explicit memories

• Implicit memories

Explicit memory

• Memory that a person can consciously bring to mind (eg., home address or date of birth)

Implicit memory

• Memory that a person is not consciously aware of, such as learned motor behaviours, skills, and habits (eg., riding a bike)

Types of explicit memories

• Semantic

  • memory of general knowledge of the world

• Episodic

  • Memory of personal events of episodes from one’s life

Types of Implicit Memory

• Procedural memory

  • Motor skills and habits

• Classically conditioned memory

  • Conditioned responses like fear, disgust, excitement, etc.

• Priming

  • Exposure to something in your environment that makes a memory more accessible (eg., seeing an ad reminding)

Primacy effect

• More likely to remember things heard fast

  • Happens when we asked after a delay

Recency effect

• More likely to remember thins hear most recently

  • Happens when asked soon after learning

Retrieval cues

• words, sights, or other stimuli that remind us of the information we need to retrieve from our memory

Priming

• one piece of information helps is retrieve other related memories

Context effects

• we can remember things better where we first learned then

Encoding specificity principle

• The original context (location or situation), mood, or state in which we learn material is loaded with retrieval cues, which leads to memories of the original event

• In essence, contexts can prime certain memories

Recognition and Recall

• Recognition tasks are easier than recall task because of priming

• Think of MCQs on exams

  • The response options are priming your memory

State dependent memory

• You remember things better when you are in the same state of mind you were in when you first learned it.

  • Similar to context dependent memory

Flashbulb memories

• Detailed memories of an emotionally significant event, or of the circumstances surrounding the moment we learned about the event

  • not necessarily more accurate than any other memory, but certainly more vivid

Forgetting

• The inability to recall information that was previously encoded into memory

• May be due to failure to attention or lack of retrieval cues

Three possible reasons for retrieval failure

• Decay theory

• Interference theory

• Motivated forgetting

Decay theory

• Memory traces (physical traces in brain) fade over time if they are not used

• Forgetting curve

  • we forget a great deal very rapidly, but the forgetting levels off and the amount of information we retain stabilizes

Interference theory

• Forgetting is influenced by what happens to people before or after they tale information in

  • Retroactive interference

    • new info interferes with old

  • Proactive interference

    • old info interferes with new

Retroactive interference

• Learning of new information disrupts access to previously recalled information

Proactive interference

• Competing information that is learned before the forgotten material, preventing its subsequent recall

Motivated forgetting

• We may forget information that is unpleasant, embarrassing, or painful, in part because we are motivated to do so

  • Repression

Repression

• Process in which we unconsciously prevent some traumatic events from entering our awareness so that we do not have to experience the anxiety or blows to our self-concept that the memories would bring

Distorted or Manufactured memories

• memories are subject to distortions because we often have to reconstruct them.

• Factors that can contribute to memory distortions are:

  • Source misattributions

  • Imaginations

  • Misinformation

  • Hypnosis

Source misattributions

• Remembering information, but not its source, may lead to remembering information from unreliable source as true

Imagination

• Memories can be distorted by false information that comes from within, from our imaginations

Misinformation

• Exposure to new information, particularly misinformation, can also lead to the distortion or the manufacture of false memories

Hypnosis

• Hypnosis in therapy, law enforcement, and other contexts has been shown to cause people to distort or manufacture memories, rather than rediscover them

Prefrontal cortex

• Is particularly important in working memory

Hippocampus

• Is important for the transfer of memories into long term memory

Memory consolidation

• process by which memories stabilize in the brain

Potentiation

• Synchronous networks of cells firing together

  • remember the idea of neural circuits

Long term potentiation (LTP)

• A phenomenon where repeated stimulation of certain nerve cells in the brain greatly increases the likelihood that the cells will respond strongly to future stimulation

Memory and Age

• Before four years of age, we have memories of faces, places, and skills, but not memories of life events (infantile amnesia)

• The hippocampus develops slowly

• Most early episodic memories are emotional

Prospective memory

• Ability to remember content in the future;

  • i.e. remembering to do an action in the future

Retrospective memory

• Ability to remember content from the past

Amnestic disorders

• Organic disorders in which memory loss is the primary symptoms

Anterograde amnesia

• can’t form new memories

Retrograde amnesia

• can’t remember things before amnesia-inducing event

Dementia

• severe memory problems combined with losses in at least one other cognitive function, such as abstract thinking or language