Unit 7: Cognitive Psychology

Memory

Memory: the persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information

• the storage and retrieval of what one has either learned or experienced

1. Encoding: getting information into our brain

2. Storage: retaining that information

3. Retrieval: later getting the information back out

Parallel processing: the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions

• Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of conscious problem solving

Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model: shows information going from shallow to deep memory through, encoding, storage & retrieval

1. We first record-to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory

2. From there, we process information into short-term memory, where we encode it through rehearsal

3. Finally, information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval

Working memory: a newer understanding of a short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory & visual-spatial information retrieved from long-term memory

• Ex: Using your working memory to link the information you’re reading with your previously stored information; pages you’re reading may enter working memory through vision

Explicit memory: memory of facts & experiences that one can consciously know and “declare”

• Also known as declarative memory

• Atkinson & Shiffrin’s model focuses on how we process our explicit memories

• Can be semantic: memory of facts, ideas, & concepts

• Can be episodic: memory of personal experiences

Implicit memory: retention independent of conscious recollection; long term memory that is unconsciously remembered

• Also known as nondeclarative memory

  • Implicit memories include: procedural memory and classically conditioned associations among stimuli

  • Procedural memory: memory of how to do everyday tasks

Retrospective vs. Prospective memory

Retrospective Memory: past experience or events and previously acquired information

Prospective memory: things you need to do in the future

• Muscle memory: relying on muscles to perform complex motor skills such as riding a bike, dancing, typing, hitting a baseball (ex: marching band at the end of the season, YOU'RE LOCKED IN!!!!!!)

• Flashbulb memories: what were you doing when..? (ties into episodic memory)

  • Usually involves stressful/emotionally arousing personal/historical events

  • Freud would argue that this happens before you’re 2 years old

  • Anderson & Conway (1997) coined the term “flashbulb memory”

  • Permanently seared into the brain

  • Eyewitness Testimony: memory does not always work like a camera that retrieves snapshots of events (ex: martin vs zimmerman case)

  • Eyewitness testimony can be flawed

  • Misinformation effect

  • Schemas: conceptual frameworks that a person uses to make sense of the world

    • Sets of expectations

Encoding

Encoding: the processing of information into the memory system-for example, by extracting meaning

• Transformation of information so the nervous system can process it

Types of codes:

• Visual: the process of rememberin (encoding) of visual images (ex:like a mental picture of something)

  • The most easy to forget, therefore the most shallow type of processing

• Acoustic: the processing and encoding of sound (ex: saying something out loud to yourself, remembering a slogan to a commercial jingle, knowing the lyrics to a song)

  • Deeper than visual encoding, but not as deep as semantic encoding (considered intermediate processing)

• Semantic: when a word, phrase, picture, etc. is encoded on the basis of its meaning rather than the sound or visual of it

  • Deepest level of processing as it allows for the best retention out of the 3

  • is an attempt to make sense of what you are trying to remember; trying to extract meaning

• Ex: you might create an easily recall acronym composed of the first letters of each word you need to remember (mnemonic device)

*mall story: getting phone numbers and remembering it w/o writing it

Effortful processing: encoding that requires attention & conscious effort

• We encode explicit memories through conscious, effortful processing

• Active processing of information that requires sustained conscious effort that can be useful for learning new information, developing skills, or solving complex problems

Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

• Behind the scenes, outside the Atkinson-Shiffrin stages, other information skips the conscious encoding track and barges directly into storage

• Illustrates how our two-track minds engages in efficient information processing

  • Ex: Tying a shoe, riding a bike, driving a car

    • Experience knitter making a scarf → their mind can wander whilst simultaneously knitting because they’ve knitted scarves many times in the past, allowing them to work without actively paying attention

- Without conscious effort you also automatically process information about:

• Space: while studying you often encode the place on a page or in your notebook where certain material appears; later, when you want to retrieve information about automatic processing, for example, you may visualize the location of that information on this page

• Time: while going about your day, you unintentionally note the sequence of its events. Later, realizing you’ve left your backpack somewhere, the event sequence your brain automatically encoded will enable you to retrace your steps

• Frequency: you effortlessly keep track of how many times things happen

Enhancing Encoding:

Maintenance Rehearsal: A system for remembering which involves repeating information to oneself without looking for any underlying meaning

Elaborative Rehearsal: the process of using active thinking about the meaning of the term that needs to be remembered rather than just repeating the information over and over again

Self-Reference Effect: applying yourself to information in order to help remember it better 

• ex: When you apply a situation to yourself, you are more likely to remember what the situation is. For example, if you are studying for AP Psychology and word sensory adaptation comes across in your notes, you could think about where you experienced it.

Primacy-Recency Effect: We can best remember or recall information at the beginning and the end of a list

Spacing Effect: the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Testing Effect: enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information

• Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning

Storage

Storage: The process by which we remember material (encoded information) acquired over a period of time

• How well we store (remember) information depends on how much effort went into encoding it and how it was encoded

• 3 types of storage are: sensory memory, short term memory, & long term memory

Sensory memory: the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

• the storage system that holds memory of sensory impressions is short-lived

• sensory register

• Feeds our active working memory by recording momentary images of scenes or sounds

Iconic memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli

• a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

• the storage for visual memory that allows people to visualize an image after the physical stimulus is no longer present 

• ex: if you see the golden gate bridge in a movie you automatically know it's taking place in san francisco

Eidetic imagery: 

• the ability to remember an image in so much detail, clarity, and accuracy that it is as though the image were still being perceived. 

• Photographic memory

Echoic: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli

• if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled withing 3 or 4 seconds

• the sensory memory that registers specific to auditory information

• Majority of your memory from infancy-early adolescence, senses

Short-term memory (STM): activated memory that holds a few items briefly before the information is stored or forgotten

• allows for the brief retention of newly acquired information, usually for a max amount of 30 seconds

  • Example: you fail your test and you're required to retake it instantly bc its fresh in your mind, if you wait longer to do a retake you'll forget everything and not do well

• George Miller (key psychologist): proposed that short term memory can retain about 7 information bits (give or take 2)

  • the study of the magic 7 (ex: license plates, phone numbers, Seven Dwarves, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Primary Colors, Seven Days of the Week etc. )

Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

• Enables us to recall things more easily

Mnemonics: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices (ex: ROY G BIV)

Long-term memory: the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system for an extended period of time

• Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

• Organized by categories/features 

• Long term memory doesn’t always stay forever (ex: you live in spain and learn spanish, if you leave spain and don't practice spanish you won't be as good and forget the language)

    -     Types of long-term memory:

• Semantic: knowledge of language, including its rules, words, and meanings

  • Retaining facts

  • Not implemented in brain

• Episodic: memories of one's own life (personal diary)

• (explicit) Declarative: holds knowledge that can be called forth consciously as needed (ex: not understanding a joke)  (“What” and “that”)

• (implicit/non-declarative) Procedural: memory of learned skills that do not require conscious recollection (LINKED TO SKILL)

  • We gradually lose the ability to describe what we are doing when we perform these skills (ex: learning how to type)

  • “How to do something” memory

Organization:

Hierarchies: Systems in which concepts are arranged from more general to more specific

• We process information not only in chunks but we also organize them in hierarchies from more broad to more specific

Schemas: conceptual frameworks that a person uses to make sense of the world which includes their sets of expectations created by past experiences

• Because of schemas, we are more likely to believe the information that supports our beliefs and would ignore information that goes against your viewpoint

Concept: a mental grouping of events, people, and similar things

Prototype: a mental image or the best representative of a certain category

• Think about the concept of a bird. "A robin is a bird 🐦" is said more than "a penguin is a bird🐧 " because the robin more closely resembles our bird prototype.

Physical Storage in the Brain:

Hippocampus: a neural center located in the limbic system; helps process (encode) explicit memories for storage

• Damage to this structure therefore disrupts recall of explicit memories

• Individuals who have damage to the hippocampus may have anterograde amnesia: the inability to encode new memories, but they can recall events that were already encoded

Retrieval

The process of obtaining information from memory storage

Memory retrieval: the process of accessing stored information and making it available to our consciousness. 

• Some memories are retrieved easily and there's a context-dependent memory effect.

Measures of Retention:

Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier (stored information) and bring it into conscious awareness

• Ex: fill-in-the blank test

Recognition: a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned; noticing something you’ve learned previously

• Ex: multiple choice test

Relearning: a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again

• Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time

  • Ex: Studying for midterms → will be easier and quicker for you to relearn the information since you’ve already learned it before (hopefully lmao)

Retention Cues:

Serial position effect: our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list → primacy-recency effect

Priming: the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Mnemonic Device:

• Method of loci: a mnemonic device in which a person memorizes information by placing each item to be remembered in different spatial locations

  • Ex: For example, let's say you want to remember this shopping list: 

• Eggs 🥚, Milk 🥛,Cheese 🧀, Potatoes 🥔, Ice cream 🍨 

• -  You could use the method of loci to remember your list by placing these different items in different spots in your house and then walking around your house to remember the list. You could place the potato on the couch in your living room and emphasize it by having it lie down on the couch.

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: the temporary inability to remember information

Context-dependent memory: specifically remembering/recalling information in the same place we encoded it

• Ex: Police take victims back to the scene of the crime to jog their memory

State-Dependent memory: how what we learn in one state will be easier to recall in that same state

• Mood-Congruent memory: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood

Constructive memory: memories may not fully recall real happenings or events since they can be altered by new information. 

• Factors such as perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes may also alter memories.

Primacy-Recency Effect: We can best remember or recall information at the beginning and the end of a list

Spacing Effect: the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Testing Effect: enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information

• Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning

Forgetting & Memory Distortion

Decay: describes the fading away of memories over time; things stored in STM decay rapidly

Memory Loss: when memory-loss occurs, short term memory goes first; in most cases, long term- memories stay in place

Interference: occurs when new memories block/erase an old memory

• Retroactive Interference: when it becomes harder to recall old information because of learning new information.

  • New information blocks old 

• Proactive Interference: when it becomes harder to recall new information because of old information in the past. The old information affects the ability to learn new information. 

  • Old information blocks new

Amnesia: inability to remember past memories/events; often caused by a traumatic injury to the brain, such as a concussion

• CTE: a brain condition thought to be linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head

• Retrograde amnesia: when you can't recall memories from your past

• Anterograde amnesia: a type of memory loss that occurs when you can't form 

new memories

• Childhood amnesia: A normal phase of development that account for the lack of memory before the ages of 3 or 4; leads to trauma

• Dissociative amnesia: when you can't remember important information about yourself

• Source Amnesia (misattribution error): the inability to remember how you learned previously acquired information

• Deja Vu: a false sense when you feel that you experienced a situation before

• Misinformation Effect: a person’s recall of an event is negatively impacted and becomes less accurate due to information after the event. After the event occurs, you might incorporate some inaccurate information about what occurred, influencing attitudes and behaviors.

Freudian Thinking:

• Motivated forgetting: purposely repressing memories and forgetting them

  • Could be conscious/unconscious

• Repression: one of the defense mechanisms in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

  • the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Biological Bases of Memory

• How and where are memories stored in the brain? The striatum (deep in the frontal cortex) & the Hippocampus & Amygdala

• The human brain has a billions of neurons and trillions of synapses

• How to track down specific networks of cells where memories are stored

• Neurotransmitters: chemical messengers released by neurons that transmit messages between neurons; chemical messages are interpreted & received in the neuron’s synapses

  • Glutamate, acetylcholine → neurotransmitters related to memory

Aplysia: some memory researchers tried to track down the specific networks of cells where memories are stored by studying a large sea snail called the Aplysia, which only has 20,000 neurons

• Erik Handel: a molecular biologist/Nobel Prize winner who did experiments with sea snails; neurotransmitter released into synapse

• Retrieval and recognition exercise: write down the 7 dwarfs names by memory

Hippocampus:

The hippocampus is part of the limbic system and in the temporal lobe

• Is responsible for the formation of memory & processes explicit memories for storage

• Damage to hippocampus results in trouble recalling explicit memories

Frontal Lobes: 

• Processes working memory; helps make sense of new information and links it to old info from LTM

• Working memory is similar to STM, but it is the processing of incoming auditory & visual info

Thalamus:

• Believed to have some role in encoding sensory memory into short-term memory

• STM is mostly located in the pre-frontal cortex & temporal lobes

Cerebellum:

• Stores implicit memories that are usually formed by classical conditioning & conditioned reflexes.

Basal Ganglia:

• Helps form procedural memories (the “how to” type of implicit memory)

Amygdala: emotions

• Processes emotions pertaining to memory

• Emotions can affect how well we process a memory

  • Ex: remembering exciting or stressful moments bc emotions release stress hormones which provoke the amygdala

• With neurons, something called long-term potentiation happens. This is the strengthening of neural connections between each other. When firings are repeated, the connections are strengthened, causing the memory to be encoded.

• Long-term potentiation: an increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning & memory