Studying and Encoding Memories

Studying Memory

LOQ: What is memory, and how is it measured

Memory is learning that persists over time; it is information that has been acquired and stored and can be retrieved.

• Research on memory’s extremes has helped us understand how memory work

There are some disorders that take memory away

• Alzheimer’s disease begins as difficulty remembering new information and progresses into an inability to do everyday tasks

There are some people who have extremely good memory

• Solomon Shereshevskii was a Russian journalist and only had to listen to people and didn’t need to write notes down

  • He could even repeat up to 70 digits; an average person can repeat 7-9 digits

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

Measuring Retention

There are 3 measures of retention the shows that learning persits:

• Recall: retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time. A fill-in-the-blank question tests your recall.

• Recognition: identifying items previously learned. A multiple-choice question tests your recognition

• Relearning: learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time. When you study for a final exam or engage a language used in early childhood, you will relearn the material more easily than you did initially.

Our response speed when recalling or recognizing information indicates memory strength, as does our speed at relearning

• Hermann Ebbinghaus randomly selected a sample of syllables, practiced them, and tested himself. To get a feel for his experiments, rapidly read aloud, eight times over, the following list

  • JIH, BAZ, FUB, YOX, SUJ, XIR, DAX, LEQ, VUM, PID, KEL, WAV, TUV, ZOF, GEK, HIW.

• He then looked away to try and recal them

Additional rehearsal (overlearning) of verbal information increases retention

Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test. recognition a measure of memory in which the person identifies items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test. relearning a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again.

Recognition: a measure of memory in which the person identifies items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

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

Memory Models

LOQ: How do psychologists describe the human memory system?

An information-processing model likens human memory to computer operations

• To rember any event we need to

  • Get information into our brain, a process called encoding

  • retain that information, a process called storage

  • later get the information back out, a process called retrieval.

Our brain processes many things simultaneously (some unconsciously) through parallel processing

• To focus on s multitrack processing, one information-processing model, connectionism, views memories as products of interconnected neural networks.

• Every time you learn something new, your brain’s neural connections change

  • Forms and strengthens your neuro pathways that allow you to interact and learn

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin  proposed a three-stage model to explain memory-forming process

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

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

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

Encoding: the process of getting information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.

Storage:  the process of retaining encoded information over time.

Retrieval: the process of getting information out of memory storage.

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

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

Short-Term Memory: activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as digits of a phone number while calling, before the information is stored or forgotten.

Long-Term Memory: the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Working Memory

Alan Baddeley and others elaborated on Atkinson and Shiffrin’s initial view of short-term memory as a small, brief storage space for recent thoughts and experience

• This stage is not just a temporary shelf for holding incoming information; it is an active scratchpad where your brain actively processes information by making sense of new input and linking it with long-term memories.

• In Baddeley’s model, , a central executive handles this focused processing

To focus on the active processing that takes place in this middle stage, psychologists use the term working memory

• Reading this is using your working memory

Working Memory: a newer understanding of short-term memory that adds conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Encoding Memories

Dual-Track Memory: Effortful Versus Automatic Processing

LOQ: How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model focused on how we process our explicit memories— the facts and experiences that we can consciously know

• This is also called declarative memories

• We encode explicit memories through conscious effortful processing

  • other information skips the conscious encoding track and goes directly into storage

    • This is called automatic processing

      • Produces implicit memories (also known as nondeclarative memories)

  • Our two track mind allows us to s encode, retain, and recall information

Explicit Memory: retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.” (Also called declarative memory.)

Effortful Processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

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

Implicit Memory: retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.)

Automatic Processing and Implicit Memories

LOQ: What information do we process automatically?

We unconsciously process information about

• Space. While studying, you often encode the place where certain material appears; later, when you want to retrieve the information, you may visualize its location.

• Tme. While going about your day, you unintentionally note the sequence of its events. Later, realizing you’ve left your coat 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, as when you realize, “This is the third time I’ve run into her today.”

Effortful Processing and Explicit Memories

Automatic processing happens effortlessly

• Learning to read wasn’t automatics but after a lot of experience and practice, it became automatic

Sensory Memory

LOQ: How does sensory memory work?

Sensory memory feeds our active working memory

• Records momentary images of scenes or echoes of sounds.

George Speling conducted an experiment, giving participants a glimpse of 9 letters and then responded in a high, medium, or low tone right after showing the letters

• All of the participants were able to recall all of the letters

• This experiment showed iconic memory

  • We also have an impeccable, though fleeting, memory for auditory stimuli, called echoic memory

    • Auditory echos typically last for 3 to 4 seconds

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.

Echoic Memory: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.

Short-Term Memory Capacity

LOQ: What is our short-term memory capacity?

George Miller proposed that we can store around 7 pieces of information in short-term memory

• Miller’s magical number seven in psychology’s contribution to the list of seven magical sevens

  • seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven colors of the rainbow, the seven musical scale notes, the seven days of the week

Without active processing, short-term memories have a very limited life

• Young adults have a bigger mental capacity than children and older adults

• No matter our age, we do better and more efficient work when focused, without distractions, on one task at a time

Effortful Processing Strategies

LOQ: What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information?

There are several processing strategies can boost our ability to form new memories

• Chunking: Glance for a few seconds at the material. Chunking information organizes items into familiar and manageable units

  • Allows us to recall it more easily

  • Usually occurs naturally

    • We can all remember info best when we can organize it into meaningful arrangements

• Mnemonics:  ancient Greek scholars and orators developed mnemonics to help encode long passages and speeches

  • Many of these memory aids use vivid imagery since we are good at remembering pictures

• Hierarchies: occurs when people have expertise in an area and process information into both chunks and hierarchies made of several broad concepts that are then divided into smaller concepts

  • Helps us retrieve info efficiently

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

Mnemonics: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Disturbed Practice

Many experiments have shown the benefits of spacing effect

• Massed practice (aka cramming) produces short-term learning and a feeling of confidence

• Distributed practice (not cramming) produces better long-term recall

  • One way to practice this is repeated self-testing

    • A phenomenon that Roediger and Jeffery Karpicke called the testing effect

• The testing effect

  • Does more than asses learning and memory

    • Testing protects our memory from the bad effects of stress

      • Stress usually impairs memory retrieval

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.

Levels of Processing

LOQ: What are the levels of processing, and how do they affect encoding?

Memory researchers discovered that we process verbal info at different levels

• This depth affects our long-term retention

• Shallow Processing: encodes on an elementary level, such as a word’s letters or, at a more intermediate level, a word’s sound

  • Might type there when we mean their

• Deep Processing: encodes semantically, based on the meaning of the words

  • The deeper (more meaningful) the processing, the better our retention.

Shallow Processing: encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words.

Deep Processing: encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention.

Making Material Personally Meaningful

The amount you remember of a topic depends on the time you spent learning it as well as you being able to make the information meaningful for deep processing

Storing and Retriveving Memories

Memory Storage

LOQ: What is the capacity of long-term memory? Are our longterm memories processed and stored in specific locations?

Our capacity for storing long-term memories is essentially limitless.

Retaining Information in the Brain

Even though the brain has a very big storage capacity, we are not able to store information like books in a library. Instead, out brain networks encode and store and then retrieve information to form complex memories

Explicit Memory System: The Frontal Lobes and Hippocampus

LOQ: What roles do the frontal lobes and hippocampus play in memory processing?

Explicit, conscious memories are either semantic or episodic

• The network that process and stores explicit memories includes you frontal lobe and hippocampus

• Cognitive neuroscientist found that the hippocampus is similar to a “save” button for explicit memories

• Memories are not permanently stored in the hippocampus

  • Acts as a loading dock where the brain registers and briefly holds the elements for a “to be remembered” event

    • It then moves elsewhere for storage

    • This process is called memory consolidation

Sleep supports memory consolidations

• during deep sleep the hippocampus process the memories for later retrieval

• If our learning is distributed over several days rather than crammed in one day, we experience more sleep-induced memory consolidation

  • Helps explain the spacing effect

Semantic Memory: explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is episodic memory).

Episodic Memory: explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is semantic memory).

Hippocampus: a neural center located in the limbic system; helps process

explicit (conscious) memories—of facts and events—for storage.

Memory Consolidation: the neural storage of a long-term memory.

Implicit Memory System: The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia

LOQ: What roles do the cerebellum and basal ganglia play in memory processing?

Hippocampus and frontal lobes are processing sites for your explicit memories

• You could lose those areas and still lay down implicit memories for skills and newly conditioned associations

  • This is because of automatic processing

The cerebellum plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories

• Created by classical conditioning

• People with a damaged cerebellum, they cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes

  • Ex a tone associated with a puff of air

The basal ganglia is a deep brain structures involved in motor movement,

• facilitate formation of our procedural memories for skills

• receive input from the cortex

  • Does not return the favor of sending information back to the cortex for conscious awareness of procedural learning

  • Ex. If you have learned to ride a bike, you will never forget because of the basal ganaglia

The implicit memory system is enabled by these more ancient brain areas

• explain why the reactions and skills we learned during infancy reach far into our future

• as adults, our conscious memory of our first four years is largely blank

  • called infantile amnesia.

• Two influences contribute to infantile amnesia

  • explicit memory with a command of language that young children do not possess

  • the hippocampus is one of the last brain structures to mature, and as it does, more gets retained

The Amygdala, Emotions, and Memory

LOQ: How do emotions affect our memory processing?

Emotions trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation

• When we are excited or stressed, these hormones make glucose energy available to fuel brain activity,

  • This singles to the brain that something important is happening

• Stress hormones focus memory

  • Stress provokes the amygdala (two limbic system, emotion-processing clusters)

    • Initiates a memory trace that boosts activity in the brain’s memory-forming areas

  • Significantly stressful events can form almost unforgettable memories. (ex. Very traumatic events such as a house fire, school shooting)

    • Might have intrusions about these memories after the event

• Emotional arousal can sear certain events into the brain, while disrupting memory for irrelevant events

  • Stronger emotional experiences make for stronger, more reliable memories

  • Such experiences even strengthen recall for relevant, immediately preceding events

    • This makes adaptive sense:

      • Memory serves to predict the future and to alert us to potential dangers

      • Emotional events produce tunnel vision memory

      • focus our attention and recall on high priority information, and reduce our recall of irrelevant details

  • Emotion-triggered hormonal changes help explain why we long remember exciting or shocking events

    • Ex first kiss, where you were when you found out about a loved one’s death

    • A Pew Study in 2006 said that 95 percent of American adults said they could recall exactly where they were or what they were doing when they first heard the news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks

    • Psychologists call these memories flashbulb memory

  • Flashbulb memories are noteworthy for their vividness and our confidence in them

    • as we relive, rehearse, and discuss them, these memories may begin to develop errors

    • Dramatic experiences remain clear in our memory in part because we rehearse them

Flashbulb Memory: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Synaptic Changes

LOQ: How do changes at the synapse level affect our memory processing?

In experiments with people, rapidly stimulating certain memory-circuit connections has increased their sensitivity for hours or even weeks to come.

• The sending neuron now needs less prompting to release its neurotransmitter, and more connections exist between neuron

  • increased efficiency of potential neural firing, called long-term potentiation (LTP), and provides a neural basis for learning and remembering association

• There are many pieces of evidence that confirm that LTP is a physical basis for memory:

  • Drugs that block LTP interfere with learning

  • Drugs that mimic what happens during learning increase LTP

  • Rats given a drug that enhanced LTP learned a maze with half the usual number of mistakes

After LTP has occurred, passing an electric current through the brain won’t disrupt old memories

• the current will wipe out very recent memories

  • Ex. the experience both of laboratory animals and of severely depressed people given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

  • Their working memory had no time to consolidate the information into long-term memory before the lights went out.

Some memory-biology explorers have helped found companies that are developing memory-altering drugs

• e target market for memory boosting drugs includes millions of people with Alzheimer’s disease

  • e target market for memory boosting drugs includes millions of people with Alzheimer’s disease

  • countless millions who would love to turn back the clock on age-related memory decline.

• Adequate sleep is a safe and free memory enhancer

One way to improving memory focuses on drugs that boost the LTP-enhancing neurotransmitter glutamate

• Another way involves developing drugs that boost production of CREB

  • . Boosting CREB production might trigger increased production of other proteins that help reshape synapses and transfer short-term memories into long-term memories.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP): an increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory.

Memory Retrieval

Retrieval Cues

LOQ: How do external cues, internal emotions, and order of appearance influence memory retrieval?

When you encode into memory a target piece of information you associate with it other bits of information about your surroundings, mood, seating position, and more

• These can serve as retrieval cues that you can later use to access the information

  • The more retrieval cues you have, the better your chances of finding a route to the suspended memory

• The best retrieval cues come from associations we form at the time we encode a memory

  • smells, tastes, and sights that can evoke our memory of the associated person or event

• To retrieve visual cues when trying to recall something, we may mentally place ourselves in the original context

Priming

Our associations are activated without our awareness

• William James referred to this process, which we call priming (aka. “wakening of associations”)

• After seeing or hearing the word rabbit, we are later more likely to spell the spoken word hair/hare as ha-r-e, even if we don’t recall seeing or hearing rabbit

Priming is often “memoryless memory”—invisible memory, without your conscious awareness

• Ex. if you see a poster of a missing child, you will then unconsciously be primed to interpret an ambiguous adult-child interaction as a possible kidnapping

  • This predisposes your interpretation

• Meeting someone who reminds us of a person we’ve previously met can awaken our associated feelings about that earlier person

Priming can influence behaviors

• Adults and children primed with money-related words and materials were less likely to help another person when asked

  • money may prime our materialism and self-interest rather than the social norms that encourage us to help

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

Context-Dependent Memory

Putting yourself back in the context where you experienced something can prime your memory retrieval.

• depends on our environment

experiencing something outside the usual setting can be confusing

• Ex . seeing a teacher at the store, you might recognize them but you may forget how you know the person

The encoding specificity principle helps us understand how cues specific to an event or person will most effectively trigger that memory

• In new settings, you may not have the memory cues needed for speedy face recognition

  • Memories are context-dependent

    • They are affected by the cues we have associated with that context.

Encoding Specificity Principle: the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

State-Dependent Memory

Closely related to context-dependent memory is state-dependent memory

• What we learn in one state—be it drunk or sober—may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state

  • Ex. what people learn when drunk they don’t recall well in any state (because alcohol disrupts memory storage)

Moods also provide an example of memory’s state dependence

• Emotions that accompany good or bad events become retrieval cues

• Our memories are somewhat mood congruent

  • Being depressed sours memories by priming negative association

• In a good or bad mood, we persist in attributing to reality our own changing judgments, memories, and interpretations

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

Serial Position Effect

The Serial Position Effect explains why we may have large holes in our memory of a list of recent events

• Ex. you are meeting your co-workers the first day on your job and you are confident you will remember their names tomorrow

• If you have spent more time rehearsing the earlier names than the later one,

Serial Position Effect:

our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list.