Memory and Learning Notes

Memory - Processes

  • Encoding: Putting new information into memory.
  • Storage: Retaining encoded information.
  • Retrieval: Accessing and using stored information.

Encoding

  • Automatic Processing:
    • Unintentional absorption of information from the environment.
    • Example: Noticing temperature, tracking routes.
  • Controlled (Effortful) Processing:
    • Active memorization that requires work.
    • Example: Using flashcards to memorize enzymes or hormones.
    • With practice, controlled processing can become automatic (e.g., learning a foreign language).
  • **Encoding Methods (when controlled processing is required): ** * Visual Encoding: Visualizing information.
    • Acoustic Encoding: Storing how information sounds.
    • Elaborative Encoding: Linking information to existing knowledge.
    • Semantic Encoding: Putting information into a meaningful context (strongest).
  • Self-Reference Effect: Recalling information best when it's put into the context of our own lives.
  • Aids to Encoding:
    • Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating information to keep it in working memory or store it in short-term/long-term memory.
    • Mnemonics: Techniques to memorize information, like acronyms, rhymes, or phrases.
      • Method of Loci: Associating items in a list with locations along a memorized route.
        • Example: Imagining grocery items in different rooms of a house.
      • Pegword System: Associating numbers with rhyming or resembling items (e.g., one = sun, two = shoe).
        • Example: Visualizing eggs being fried by the sun.
    • Chunking (Clustering): Grouping individual elements of a large list into meaningful groups.
      • Example: Grouping letters into bus, car, truck, plane (from e n a l p k c u r t r a c s u b).

Storage

  • Sensory Memory:
    • Preserves information in its original sensory form for a very short time (less than one second).
    • Iconic Memory: Fast-decaying memory of visual stimuli.
    • Echoic Memory: Fast-decaying memory of auditory stimuli.
    • Maintained by major projection areas of sensory systems (e.g., occipital lobe for vision, temporal lobe for hearing).
    • Demonstration: Experiment with flashed letters (whole report vs. partial report).
  • Short-Term Memory:
    • Fades quickly (approx. 30 seconds) without rehearsal.
    • Limited capacity: Approximately seven items (plus or minus two rule).
    • Capacity can be increased by clustering, and duration can be extended using maintenance rehearsal.
    • Housed primarily in the hippocampus.
  • Working Memory:
    • Enables keeping a few pieces of information in consciousness and manipulating that information.
    • Integrates short-term memory, attention, and executive function.
    • Involves frontal and parietal lobes.
    • Example: Doing simple math in one's head.
  • Long-Term Memory:
    • Essentially limitless warehouse for knowledge.
    • Information consolidated through elaborative rehearsal (associating information with existing knowledge).
    • Closely tied to the self-reference effect.
    • Primarily controlled by the hippocampus initially, but memories move to the cerebral cortex over time. Thus, very long term memories are generally not affected by damage to the hippocampus.
    • Types of Long-Term Memory:
      • Implicit (Nondeclarative) Memory: Skills, habits, and conditioned responses that don't require conscious recall.
        • Procedural Memory: Unconscious memory of skills required to complete procedural tasks.
        • Priming: Exposure to one stimulus affecting perception of a second.
          • Positive Priming: First stimulus improves processing of the second.
          • Negative Priming: First stimulus interferes with processing of the second.
      • Explicit (Declarative) Memory: Memories that require conscious recall.
        • Episodic Memory: Recollection of life experiences.
        • Semantic Memory: Ideas, concepts, or facts not tied to specific life experiences.
        • Autobiographical Memory: Explicit memories about our lives, including episodic and semantic memories related to personal traits.

Retrieval

  • Demonstrating that something learned has been retained.
  • Recall: Retrieving and stating previously learned information.
  • Recognition: Identifying previously learned information (easier than recall).
  • Relearning: Learning something more quickly the second time.
    • Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that recall of a list of short words he had learned the previous day was often quite poor. However, he was able to re memorized the list much more quickly the second time through.
    • Spacing Effect: Greater retention when learning is spaced out over time.
  • Semantic Networks: Brain organizes ideas into networks where concepts are linked based on similar meaning.
    • Spreading Activation: When one node in the network is activated, linked concepts are unconsciously activated, aiding recall.
  • Retrieval Cues:
    • Context Effect: Memory is aided by being in the physical location where encoding took place.
    • State-Dependent Memory: Recall is better when in the same mental state as when the information was learned (e.g., intoxication, mood).
    • Serial Position Effect: An item's position in a list affects recall.
      • Primacy Effect: Tendency to remember early items in the list.
      • Recency Effect: Tendency to remember late items in the list, though this may fade over time.

Forgetting

  • Amnesia: Significant loss of memorized information.
    • Source Amnesia: Inability to remember where, when, or how knowledge was obtained.
  • Brain Disorders:
    • Alzheimer's Disease: Degenerative brain disorder linked to loss of acetylcholine; marked by progressive dementia and memory loss.
      • Microscopic findings include neurofibrillary tangles and beta-amyloid plaques.
      • Sundowning: Increased dysfunction in the late afternoon and evening.
    • Korsakoff Syndrome: Memory loss caused by thiamine deficiency; marked by retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
      • Confabulation: Creating vivid but fabricated memories to fill in gaps.
    • Agnosia: Loss of ability to recognize objects, people, or sounds.
  • Decay: Memories lost naturally over time as neurochemical traces fade.
    • Curve of Forgetting (Retention Function): Recall falls sharply initially but then levels off.
  • Interference: Retrieval error caused by similar information.
    • Proactive Interference: Old information interferes with new learning.
    • Retroactive Interference: New information causes forgetting of old information.
      • Preventing Retroactive Interference: Reduce the number of interfering events like studying in the evening before sleep.

Aging and Memory

  • Aging does not necessarily lead to significant memory loss.
  • Range of memory ability is larger for older individuals.
  • Most vivid memories for older people often pertain to events in their teens and 20s.
  • Recognition and skill-based memory remain relatively strong.
  • Semantically meaningful material can be easily learned and recalled.
  • Prospective Memory:
    • Event-based (primed by a trigger event) remains intact.
    • Time-based (remembering to do something at a specific time) declines with age.

Memory Reconstruction

  • Reproductive Memory: Accurate recall of past events (not entirely true)
  • Reconstructive Memory: Cognitive processes like imagination and perception affect remembering.
  • False Memory: Memory that incorrectly recalls actual events or recalls events that never occurred.
    • Common due to encoding with little detail and filling in missing details with unreliable information.
  • Repressed Memories: Memories stored in the unconscious mind and blocked from recall.
    • Recovered Memories: Repressed memories that are brought back into consciousness.
  • Misinformation Effect: Recall of an event becomes less accurate due to the injection of outside information into the memory.
  • Intrusion Errors: False memories that include a false detail into a particular memory.
  • Source Monitoring Error: Confusion between semantic and episodic memory; remembering details of an event but confusing the context.