Encoding: getting information to memory

• Even though we have all been exposed to certain things, we pay little attention to them. We need to pay attention to something in order to encode it. 

• Levels-of-processing theory: the deeper we process something and the more we think about it, the better we will retain this information

• EX: each subject was presented with 60 written words. After the word appears the subject is asked 1 of 3 questions meant to elicit a certain type of encoding; shallow/structural encoding, intermediate/phonemic encoding, and deep/semantic processing. After this they were given 180 words, 60 were on the original list and 120 were not. They were told to circle the words that were on the original list. The words with only shallow processing (structural) were not recalled very well while the words that required deep processing (semantic) were recalled at almost 90% accuracy. 

• Structural Encoding: emphasizes the physical structure of the stimulus

• Phonemic Encoding: emphasizes what a word sounds like 

• Semantic Encoding: emphasizes the meaning of the verbal input

• What Helps For Deeper Encoding (AKA Better Memorization)?

• Elaboration

• Personal Examples

• Imagery

• Mnemonics: any rhyme or trick used to help memorize something        (EX: ROYGBIV)

Storage: retaining information over time 

• The “Three-Box Model” of Memory: three separate storage systems

• Sensory Memory: the first place information from the environment arrives. The information exists in its original sensory form. Large capacity but very brief retention of images. The purpose is to get a lot of information to us quickly so we can pay attention and attend to it. If we pay attention to something it is transitioned to short-term memory but if we don't it is forgotten within less than a second. 

• Original sensory form

• Large capacity

• Very short duration (visual= ¼ second)

• Attend to information or it will be lost

• Short-Term Memory: Conscious processing of information, whatever you're thinking about right now. This processes new information but also recalls long-term memory to think about it again. Very limited capacity and only lasts around 30 seconds. If we focus and elaborate on what we are thinking about then we encode it into long-term memory.

• Incoming information & information retrieved from long-term memory

• Capacity: we can hold in our short-term memory between 5-9 (7 +or-2) items

• Duration = about 20 seconds without rehearsal 

• Long-Term Memory: unlimited capacity and there is no known time upon which memories fail or we forget. Information is organized and indexed such as chronologically. 

• Long term storage of information

• Capacity: Unlimited 

• Duration: Not known, permanent? 

Retrieval: Taking information out of storage 

• Context Cues

• Encoding Specificity Principle: we retrieve information better when we are in the same context as we were when we learned/encoded the information

• State Dependent Memory: the tendency to remember information better when we are in the same physical or mental state that we were when we first learned it. e

Chunking: 

• Chunk: familiar unit of information

• May be composed of smaller units 

Short Term Memory as “Working Memory”

• Baddeley agrued that there are 4 components of working memory

• Phonological Loop: sound based processing skill

• Recitation 

• Visuospatial Sketchpad

• Manipulate images 

• “I wonder if I could fit this new couch into my living room?”

• Central Executive

• Juggling information when reasoning 

• Pros and cons

• Buffer

• Integrates information from the other components

• Some roll in transferring incoming information to long term memory

• Firming up memory for long term learning 

Procedural: “knowing how”

• Memory for actions

• Dibble and shoot a basketball 

Declarative: “knowing that” 

• more effort is required to remember

• More vulnerable to forgetting

• Memory for facts 

• Rules of basketball

• Semantic: general knowledge 

• Episodic memory: personal experiences 

Serial Position Effect: We best recall first and last items on a list, we tend to forget the middle items. The tendency to remember early items is due to a lack of interference. The tendency to remember later items is still a mystery. 

False Memory Study, 1995

• Critical Word: word that was not actually in the list of words but was related to all the words in the set 

• 50% recalled the critical word

• 80% recognized and circle the critical word

• Memory is malleable 

The Manufacture of Memory 

• NOT a videotape 

• Reconstructive Process: every time you retrieve information you reconstruct it a little bit

• We tend to remember things consistent with our own expectations

• We tend to remember things consistent with our schemas/assumptions

• Source Monitoring Error: when you remember hearing something and you believe that you read it from your textbook but you actually heard it on social media. You give the information too much credit because you believe it came from a more reliable source. 

• Flashbulb Memories: a memory of something shocking, sometimes tragic, that often contains great detail. 

• EX: 9/11

• It was once assumed that flashbulb memories were more vivid and therefore very accurate but it has since been proven that they are just as susceptible to false memory errors as any other memory. 

• The Misinformation Effect: the wording of questions asking after watching a situation can affect someone's memories about a situation.

• Elizabeth Loftus 

• Wording of questions

• One group was fed false information about a video while the other group were not. A week later the first group describes the false information into their memory of the event even though it did not happen. 

Forgetting Curve

• Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables-syllables that can be pronounced but have no real meaning. 

• He found that forgetting was rapid at first but then leveled off; whatever he was able to hang on to for a day or two he was able to remember a month later. 

Why We Forget

• Ineffective (shallow) Encoding

• Never actually made it into your memory

• Pseudo-forgetting 

• Not making the information meaningful or lazy learning

• Decay Theory

• Information eventually disappears overtime 

• Applies to sensory and STM

• NOT to LTM 

• Interference

• Proactive Interference: Information that you learned first interferes with remembering information that you learned later

• Retroactive Interference: Information that you learned second interferes with information that you learned first. 

• Cue Failure

• Encoding Specificity Principle

• Motivated Forgetting (Repression)

• Loss of memory of unpleasant information

• Freud argued that the most important defensive mechanism we have is repression 

• Repressed memory controversy

• Individuals claimed to have been abused decades earlier and argued that they had repressed the memories of them being abused 

• Most of these cases were not repressed memories but actually false memories; the abuse never actually happened 

• Very suggestive therapeutic techniques were the root of a lot of these false memories; vulnerable client who is being pressured into remembering something that did not actually happen

• It is recognized that some repressed memories did actually happen

Physiology of Memory

• H.M. - Damaged hippocampus led to him not being able transfer short term memories into long term memories; plot of 50 1st dates 

• Hippocampal Region

• Consolidation of memory 

• When we experience something it creates new neural circuits or connections

• Competing Idea: We we experience something there are increased potentiation at synapses; increased firing potential 

Chapter 10: Human Development Across the Lifespan 

Prenatal Development: Conception (sperm + egg = zygote) to birth, rapid growth 

• Three Stages 

1. Germinal Stage: zygote, lasts about 2 weeks after conception, rapid cell division, implantation into the uterus

2. Embryonic Stage: embryo, 2-8 weeks after conception, during this stage that the organism is most vulnerable, stage at which most miscarriages happen, organs are developing very rapidly during this stage, at the end the embryo is 1 inch long and 1/30th of an ounce

3. Fetal Stage: fetus, 8 weeks after conception until birth, 7 months long, movement begins, central nervous system is developing in high gear, age of viability:the age at which the fetus could (50% chance) survive if born then (23-25 weeks) full term is 38 weeks, average child at birth is 71/2 lbs and 20 inches long 

• Teratogens: substance that impairs development

• Cigarette Smoking: reduces the flow of oxygen to that child

• #1 cause of low birth weight (under 5 ½ lbs )

• SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), ADHD

•  impair the development of the respiratory system 

• Alcohol

• #1 non-hereditary cause of cognitive disability (mental retardation) 

• Fetal alcohol syndrome

• Caffeine

• Increases the probability of a miscarriage 

• 200 mg of caffeine a day doubled the risk of miscarriage 

Infant Survival Rate: The U.S is pretty low on the list of infant survival rates, we do not have effective universal health care, not equally accessible to everyone 

Motor Development 

• Wide variability in when children reach the motor developmental milestones such as walking, rolling over, standing, etc. 

• There are differences in the times that children develop motor skills across different cultures. In some countries infants are encouraged to move and they end up walking sooner. In others where they are not encouraged to move, they walk later. 

• Cultural differences- impact of experience, not just biological 

Attachment: 

• Emotional bond 

• Freud & Behaviorists - feeding: they argued that the fact that the mother feeds the baby is why the mother and the baby become bonded. Freud said children seek oral satisfaction. The behaviorists argued that the baby was reinforced for being with mom by being fed. 

• Harry Harlow (1958)

• Wire v. Cloth “mother” 

• Infant monkeys were taken from their real mothers and put into a cage with two fake mothers, a mother made of wire and a mother made of soft cloth. Only the wire mother had a feeding tube so if the feeding explanation was true then the baby would choose to spend its time with the wire mother. This was not what they found. The baby actually spent most of its time with the cloth mother. 

• Contact Comfort: basis of first attachment, infants have a need to cuddle with something soft. This is the more widely believed idea. 

• John Bowlby - Biologically programmed: babies are biologically programmed to do things that encourage an emotional bond

• They do things that draw in adults, coos, big eyes, 

• Adults are also biologically programmed to take care of the baby and be drawn in 

• The Strange Situation

• Mary Ainsworth 

• Test of infant-caregiver attachment

• A sequence of events that an infant is put through. First the baby is brought into a room with lots of toys and mom sits off to the side. Then mom gets up and leaves the room. Then a stranger comes into the room and sits where mom was sitting. Then the stranger leaves and mom returns. 

• Babies exhibit 1 of 3 patterns of attachment 

1. Secure Attachment (67%): good secure bond with mom and is associated with good things later on in life, good social life, better grades. EX: baby played with toys but checked in with mom every now and then, parent as a base. Then when the mom leaves the baby cries, separation anxiety. The stranger doesn’t help. When mom comes back into the room, the baby calms down right away, consolable \

2. Insecure: Two Forms:

• Avoidant (21%): No apparent bond with the mother. They dont seems to care about the mom, they play with the toys, don't check in and dont care when mom leaves or returns 

• Anxious/Ambivalent (resistant) (12%): clingy, won’t explore the toys, the baby isn’t confident enough in the relationship with mom to walk away and explore the room. When mom leaves, the baby cries but when mom comes back the baby continues to cry, not consolable, angry cry. 

Stage Theories of Development 

• The Components 

• Sequential: the stages go in order and you do not go back and forth

• Stage-Age: the stage a person is in is highly related to their age

• Discontinuities: moving from one stage to the next involves a lot of behavior changes all at once 

• Erik Erikson - Personality Development

• 8 Stages in our lifetime

• Each stage is marked by a “psychosocial crisis” or a turning point issue related to issues with others. The way we handle these issues shapes our personality. 

• First lifelong theory of development. We continue to evolve throughout our lifetime. 

• Jean Piaget - Cognitive Development

• Thinking, reasoning, and problem solving

• 4 stage theory of cognitive development

1. Sensorimotor (Infancy) : the child is spending a lot of time figuring out how incoming sensations relate to movement. Major Accomplishment: Object permanence: the understanding that things continue to exist even if you cannot see them. 

2. Preoperational (2-7): children at this stage cannot do operations. Major Accomplishment: Improved symbolic thought: vocabulary increases vastly, drawing pictures of real life things. Errors:centration, irreversibility, egocentrism, animism. 

• Centration: the child focuses on one aspect of the problem and ignores everything else 

• Irreversibility: the inability to mentally undo something 

• Egocentrism: completely unable to perceive the world from any other point of view 

• Animism: the tendency to apply human emotions to inanimate objects. 

3. Concrete Operational(7-11):

• Conservation (number,mass) 

• Hierarchical classifications

4. Formal Operational (11+):

• Systematic problem solving

• Can deal with hypothetical situations

- Issues with Piaget’s Theory 

• Stage changes not clear-cut, it's very common for children to grow between two stages

• Underestimated children’s abilities 

• Overestimated adults 

• Ignored training and culture, he believed that cognitive development was solely genetic

• Contributions

• Children construct their own knowledge

• Skills do build and they are in the sequence that Piaget described

Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Social contexts of learning, we need other people as teachers, models and more skilled partners to learn 

• Guided participation: the child learns through guided participation from their superiors 

• Culture: we learn what our culture considers important to teach

• Language guides learning. Private speech helps us develop 

Comparisons Between Piaget and Vygotsky

Lawrence Kohlberg- Moral Reasoning: 

• Kohlberg’s method of investigation

• Scenarios

• Subjects’ reasoning was key.

• Most influential moral theorist 

Three Stages of Moral Reasoning

• Preconventional Level: external authority 

• The “morally” correct thing to do in order to avoid punishment or to obtain rewards

• Conventional Level: maintain order

• The “morally” correct thing to do in order to obtain approval of others or to rigidly obey rules 

• Postconventional Level: personal ethics 

• The “morally” correct thing to do in order to follow society’s rules, but they are fallible or to serve equity and justice. 

Criticisms of Kohlberg's Theory

• Stage mixing occurs 

• His theory is based on unrealistic scenarios 

• They ask people for their moral reasoning but do not study their actual behavior

• Ignored cultural differences, some cultures are taught to be much more obedient and group oriented