Memory

• mental system for receiving, encoding, storing, organizing, altering, and retrieving information; memory is any indication that learning has persisted over time

Memory Terms

• Encoding: the first stage in remembering something, it is the processing of information into the memory system

  • initial recoding of information

• Storage: the maintenance of material saved in memory

  • information saved for future use

• Retrieval: the process of getting information out of memory storage in order for it to be useful

  • recovery of stored information

• Sensory Memory: the first stage of memory, which holds an exact record of incoming information for a few seconds or less

• Short-Term Memory: the memory system used to hold small amounts of information for relatively brief periods of time (15-25 seconds); it prevents our mind from storing useless information

• Working Memory: another name for short-term memory, especially as it is used for thinking and problem solving

• Long-Term Memory: the essentially limitless memory system used for relatively permanent storage of meaningful information

• Sensory Memories

  • sight (iconic)

  • sound (echoic)

  • other sensory memories

  • forgetting typically within 1 seconds

• Short Term Memory

  • forgetting within 15-25 seconds

• Repetitive Rehearsal

  • retain information in short-term memory

• Elaborative Rehearsal

  • moves information into long-term memory

• Atkinson and Shiffrin Theory (1968)

  • Remembering is thought to involve at least 3 steps. Incoming information is first held for a second or 2 by sensory memory information selected by attention is then transferred to temporary storage in short-term memory. If new information is not rapidly encoded, or rehearsed, it is forgotten. If it is transferred to long-term memory, it becomes relatively permanent, although retrieving it may be a problem. The preceding is a useful model of memory; it may not literally true of what happens in the brain

Storage: Retaining Information

• Storage is the heart of memory. 3 stores of memory are shown below

Sensory Memory

• can store an almost exact replica of each stimulus to which it is exposed

• The duration of sensory memory varies for the different senses. The longer the delay, the greater the memory loss.

Short-Term Memory

• Information Bias: meaningful units of information, such as numbers, letters, words, or phrases. On average, 7 (±2) information bits can be held in short-term memory

• Information Chunks: information bits grouped into larger units. Chucking recodes (reorganizes) information that are already in long-term memory.

• the transfer of material from short- to long-term memory proceeds largely on the basis of rehearsal, the repetition of information that has entered short-term memory

  • Maintenance Rehearsal: silently repeating or mentally reviewing information to hold it in short-term memory

    • When someone is introduced, pay careful attention to the name, repeat it to yourself several times, and try to use it in the next sentence or two.

  • Elaborative Rehearsal: rehearsal that links new information with existing memories and knowledge

    • When you are studying, you will remember more if you elaborate, extend, and reflect on the meaning of the information

Long-Term Memory

• like a new file we save on hard drive, the information in long-term memory is filed and coded so that we can retrieve it when we need it

• Constructive Processing: reorganizing or updating long-term memory on the basis of logic, reasoning, or adding new information

• Network Model: a model of memory that views it as an organized system of linked information. Information in our long-term memory is not arranged in an alphabetical order, but in a system of linked meanings

• Redintegrative Memories: memories that are reconstructed or expanded by starting with one memory and then following a chain of association to another, related memories. One memory serves as cue to trigger another

Misinformation Effect

• after exposure to subtle misinformation, many people misremember

Source Amnesia

• Source amnesia (misattribution) happens when we attribute to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. Thus, we may recognize someone but have no idea where we have seen the person. Or we may dream an event and later be unsure whether it really happened. Or we may hear something and later recall seeing it.

Long-Term Memory Modules (Components)

• Procedural Memory or Implicit Memory: long-term memory of conditioned responses and learned skills like typing, driving, or swinging a golf club; likely registered in lower brain areas, especially in the cerebellum

• Declarative Memory or Explicit Memory: part of the long-term memory containing specific factual information, such as names, faces, words, dates, and ideas. Processed in the hippocampus; type of memory that a person with amnesia lacks

  • Semantic Memory: a subpart of declarative memory that records impersonal knowledge of the world such as names of objects, words, and language, etc.

  • Episodic Memory: a subpart of declarative memory that records personal experiences that are linked with specific times and places; the “what”, “when”. and “where” of our lives

Measuring Memory

• Remembering something is not an all-or-nothing event. Partial retrieval is common:

  • Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) Phenomenon: the feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable; a result of the difficulty of retrieving information from long-term memory

  • Feeling of Knowing: the feeling that one can tell beforehand if they are likely to remember something

  • Deja Vu: the eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this before”; cures from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

• 3 commonly used memory tasks

  • Recall: to supply or reproduce memorized information with a minimum of external cues; often require verbatim (word-for-word) memory, such as memorizing a poem

    • Serial Position Effect: the tendency to make the most errors in remembering the middle items of an ordered list; easiest to remember last items in a list because they are still in short-term memory

  • Recognition Memory: an ability to correctly identify previously learned information

    • You could take a multiple choice test of a subject you took last year. Because you would only recognize correct answers, you would probably find that you learned a lot.

  • Relearning: a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again; used to measure of prior learning

    • Savings Score: the amount of time saved when relearning information

• Explicit Memory: a memory that a person is aware of having, a memory that is consciously retrieved. Recall, recognition, and the tests you take in school rely on explicit memories.

• Implicit Memory: a memory that a person does not know exists; a memory that is retrieved unconsciously

  • Priming: facilitating the retrieval of implicit memory by using cues to activate hidden memories

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories

• Explicit Memory: refers to facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare

• Implicit Memory: involves learning an action while the individual does not know or declare that she or he knows

Cerebellum

• a neural center in the hindbrain that processes implicit memories created by classical conditioning

• with a damaged cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes

Exceptional Memory

• Eidetic Memory: the ability to retain a “projected” mental image long enough (at least 30 seconds) to use it as a source information; usually projected onto a “plain” surface, like a blank piece of paper; usually disappears during adolescence and is rare by adulthood

• but most of the time, exceptional memory is merely a learned extension of normal memory. Exceptional memorizers were found to

  • use memory strategies and techniques (e.g., chunking and mnemonics)

  • have specialized interests and knowledge that make certain types of information easier to encode and recall

  • do not have superior intellectual abilities but have naturally superior memory abilities (e.g., vivid mental images)

Forgetting

• Nonsense Syllables: meaningless 3-letter words that test learning and forgetting

  • Philosopher Herman Ebbinghaus made use of such syllables to study successful retrieval of information

• Curve of Forgetting: graph that shows the amount of memorized into remembered after varying lengths of time

• Encoding Failure: when a memory was never formed in the first place

• Memory Decay: when memory traces (change in nerve cells or brain activity) become weaker; fading or weakening of memories

• Memory Cue: any stimulus associated with a particular memory; memory cues usually enhance memory; a person will forget if cues are missing at retrieval time

  • If you wear a particular perfume or cologne while you prepare for a test, it might be wise to wear it when you take the test.

• State-Dependent Learning: memory influenced by one’s bodily state (also, mood) at the time of learning and at the time of retrieval; improved memory occurs when the bodily states match

  • If Robert is drunk and forgets where his car is parked, it will be easier to recall the location if he gets drunk again.

• Interference: the tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of older memories, and the reverse; it applies to both short-term memory and long-term memory

  • Retroactive Interference: the tendency for new memories to interfere with the retrieval of old memories

  • Proactive Interference: the tendency for old memories to interfere with the retrieval of newer memories

• Repression: unconsciously pushing unwanted memories out of awareness; motivated forgetting. Through repression, painful, threatening, or embarrassing memories are held out of consciousness. The forgetting of past failures, upsetting childhood events, the names of people you dislike, or appointments you don’t want to keep may reveal repression

• Suppression: a conscious effort to put something out of minds or to keep it from awareness. Evidence suggests that we can choose to actively suppress remembering upsetting information. This tends to keep cues out of mind that could trigger a painful memory.

Constructed Memories

• Elizabeth Loftus’ research shows that if false memories (lost at the mall or drowned in a lake) are implanted in individuals, they construct (fabricate) their memories

Consensus on Childhood Abuse

Leading psychological associations of the world agree on the following concerning childhood sexual abuse

1. injustice happens

2. incest and other sexual abuse happen

3. forgetting happens

4. recovered memories are commonplace

5. recovered memories under hypnosis or drugs are unreliable

6. memories of things happening before 3 years of age are unreliable (infantile amnesia)

7. memories whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting

Flashbulb Memories

• memories centered on a specific, important, or surprising event that are so vivid it is as if they represented a snapshot of the event

• most often formed when an event is surprising, important, or emotional

• seems to be very detailed; often focus primarily on how one reacted to the event

Memory Formation

• another reason why forgetting happens is that memories may be lost as they are being formed

• Retrograde Amnesia: forgetting events that occurred before an injury or trauma

• Anterograde Amnesia: forgetting events that follow an injury or trauma

  • After losing his hippocampus in surgery, the patient remembered everything before the operation but cannot make new memories

• retrograde amnesia can be understood if we assume that it takes certain amount of time to move information from short-term memory and long-term memory

• Consolidation: process by which relatively permanent memories are formed

• Electroconvulsive Shock (ECS): mild electrical shocks passed through the brain, causing a convulsion; wipes out memories during consolidation

• Hippocampus: a brain structure associated with emotion and the transfer of information from short-term memory to long-term memory; this is done by growing new neurons and by making new connections within the brain

  • If the hippocampus is damaged, a person can no longer “create” long-term memories and thus will always live in the present; memories prior to damage will remain intact

Alzheimer’s Disease

• an illness characterized in part by severe memory problems

Korsakoff’s Syndrome

• a disease that afflicts long-term alcoholics which results to amnesia

Improving Memory

• Knowledge of Results: feedback allowing you to check your progress

• Recitation: summarizing aloud while you are rehearsing material sources you to practice retrieve information

• Rehearsal: reviewing information mentally aids recall, but elaborative rehearsal is better because you establish connections with existing knowledge

• Selection: selecting most important concepts to memorize; practice very selective marking in your texts and use marginal nots to further summarize ideas

• Organization: organizing difficult items into chunks -- a type of reordering; you may also want to summarize ideas so that the overall network of ideas become clearer and simpler

• Whole Learning: studying an entire package of information at once, like a poem, especially for fairly short, organized information

• Path Learning: studying subparts of a larger body of information (like text chapters); study the largest meaningful amount of information at a time

• Progressive Part Learning: for very long or complex material, break learning tasks into a series of short sections; at first, you study part A until it is mastered; next, you study parts A and B; then A, B, C; and so forth

• Serial Position Effect: because most errors in remembering happen with items in the middle of a list, pat attention to middle items

• Overlearning: studying is continued beyond bare mastery

• Spaced Practice: alternating study session with brief rest periods; 3 20-minute study sessions can produce more learning than 1 hour of continuous study

• Sleep and Memory: people who are hungry almost always score lower on memory tests

• Use Mnemonics: a mnemonic is any kind of memory system or aid

  • use mental pictures, make things, meaningful, make information familiar, form bizarre, unusual or exaggerated mental associations

  • keyword method -- using familiar word or image to link 2 terms