Cognitive Approach: Memory Notes

What is Memory?

• Key to reading, writing, and self-awareness.
• Indicates learning persistence.
• Involves storing and retrieving information.
• Elements of a single memory can be stored in different brain sites.

How Memory Works: Information-Processing Model

• Encoding: Requires attention to the material.
• Storage: Encoded information is stored in long-term memory.
• Retrieval: Accessing stored information in long-term memory.

Testing Memory

• Recall: Producing information, tested via: Free recall (any order) and Cued recall (with prompts).
• Recognition: Selecting correct information from a list containing distractors.

Short Term vs Long Term Memory

• Short Term Memory: Fragile, lasts seconds, used for immediate information.
• Long Term Memory: Durable, used for past events, childhood memories, skills.

Sensory Memory

• Iconic (eyes): $0.5$ sec
• Echoic (ears): $3-4$ sec
• Hepatic (touch): More than $1$ sec
• Memory loss increases with delay.

Multistore Model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968)

• Information enters sensory stores (iconic/echoic).
• Sensory information decays quickly if not processed.
• Selected information moves to short term store.
• Rehearsal is important for transferring information to long term memory.
• Interference can occur during retrieval.
• Brain damage studies show separate short term and long term memory systems.

Evaluation of Multistore Model

• Influential in distinguishing between long-term and short-term memory.
• Oversimplification, as short term memory and long term memory are not unified systems.
• Rehearsal is not always necessary for storing information.

Short Term Memory

• Consciously aware information.
• Capacity assessed by memory span.
• Capacity can be enhanced through chunking.
• Capacity is four chunks (Cowan et al., 2005).

Working Memory (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974)

• Replaces short term memory concept.
• Components:
  • Central executive: Limited capacity, planning and attention.
  • Phonological loop: Processes speech-based information.
  • Visuo-spatial sketchpad: Processes visual and spatial information.
  • Episodic buffer: Storage system for information from other components and long-term memory.

Long Term Memory

• Stores a wide range of information.
• Types:
  • Declarative (Explicit)
  • Non-declarative (Procedural)

Declarative (Explicit) Memory

• Conscious recollection of events and facts.
• Types:
  • Episodic: Past events, constructive, prone to error.
  • Semantic: Facts and information, organized as schemas, less vulnerable to amnesia.
  • Autobiographical: Personal experiences, linked to personality.
• Hippocampus processes.

Procedural (Implicit) Memory

• Motor and other skills, revealed through behavior.
• Explained by:
  • Priming: Easy processing of previously presented stimuli.
  • Skill learning: Gradual learning with little conscious awareness.
• Cerebellum processes.

Brain Organization

• Organised information is better remembered.
• Categorical clustering: Recalling items by category.
• Relies on schemas.

Schema Theory

• Schemas: Organised information packets that guide actions.
• Enhance long term memory by providing framework.
• Can cause distortions in recall (rationalisation).

Forgetting

• Rate is fastest shortly after learning.
• Reasons: Interference (proactive, retroactive), repression.
• Cue dependent forgetting: Encoding specificity principle.

Interference

• Current learning is disrupted.
  • Proactive: Previous learning disrupts current learning.
  • Retroactive: Future learning disrupts current learning; sleep helps prevent it.

Repression

• Motivated forgetting of traumatic memories.
• Recovered memories can be false (Loftus & Davis, 2006).

Retrieving Long-Term Memory

• Priming: Activating associated memories.
• Context effects: Retrieving information best in the encoding context.
• Retrieval failure: Inability to retrieve, leads to tip of the tongue phenomenon.

State Dependent Cues

• Mood congruence effects: Recall consistent with current mood.
• Physiological state dependent effects: Physiological state acts as retrieval cue.

Motivated Forgetting

• Conscious effort to forget.

Forgetting: Consolidation

• Forgetting decreases over time due to consolidation.
• New memories are vulnerable to interference.
• Consolidation is a physiological process that lasts hours and occurs during sleep.
• Retrograde amnesia affects unconsolidated memories.

Memory Construction

• Memory is constructed (imagined, selected, changed, rebuilt).
• Misinformation effect: Incorporating misleading information.

Memory Construction: Eyewitness Testimony

• Prone to error, influenced by later information.

Misinformation Effect

• Loftus and Palmer (1974) car accident study: wording affects speed estimates and memory.

Memory Construction: Eye Witness Remembering Faces

• Unfamiliar faces are harder to remember.
• Other-race effect: Difficulty recognizing faces of other races.

Memory Construction: Eye Witness

• Confirmation bias: Memory distortions based on expectations.
• Weapon focus: Attention to weapon impairs memory of other details.

Memory Construction: Eye Witness Experience from Laboratory to Courtroom

• Real-life eyewitnesses are often victims in stressful situations.
• Memory construction may be more prevalent in the courtroom.