7.1 A General Model of Memory

• Memory: Series of active systems that receive, store, organize, alter, and recover information

  Types of Memory

• Encoding (in memory): Converting information into a form to be retained in memory.

• Storage (in memory): Holding information into a form to be retained in memory.

• Retrieval (in memory): Recovery of stored information.

  7.2 Sensory and Short-Term (Working) Memory

• Sensory memory: Fleeting storage system for sensory impressions.

  • Large capacity but short duration

  • We are typically not aware of sensory memory

• Iconic Memory: A mental image or visual representation.

  • Typically stores visual sensory images for about half a second

• Echoic memory: A brief continuation of sensory activity in the auditory system after a sound is heard.

  Short-Term (Working) Memory

• Short-term memory (STM): Storage system used to hold small amounts of information in conscious awareness for about a dozen seconds.

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

  The Capacity of Working Memory

• Information bits: Meaningful units of information, such as numbers, letters, words, or phases.

• Chunking: Process of grouping similar or meaningful information together.

  • Recodes or reorganizes information into units that are already in long-term memory

  • Suggests working memory holds about four to seven units of information

  • Makes most efficient use of space in working memory

  Working Memory Processes

• Maintenance rehearsal: Repeating information over and over to keep it active in short-term memory.

  • Without rehearsal memories actively decay from memory

• Rote rehearsal (rote learning): Learning by simple repetition.

• Elaborative rehearsal (elaborative encoding): Making memories more meaningful through processing that encodes links between new information and existing memories and knowledge, either at the time of the original encoding or on subsequent retrievals.

  • Meaningful of information

  • Form links between new and existing information

  7.3 Long-Term Memory

• Long-term memory (LTM): Unlimited capacity storage system that can hold information over lengthy periods of time.

  Organization Based on Networks

• Network model (of memory): A model of memory that views it as an organized system of linked information.

• Retrieval cue: Any information that can prompt or trigger the retrieval of particular memories. Retrieval cues usually enhance memory.

• Redintegration: Process by which memories are reconstructed by expanded by starting with one memory and then following chains of association to other, related memories.

  Types of Long-Term Memory

• Implicit Memory: A recollection that a person does not know exists and is retrieved unconsciously

  • Those things that require motor or performance skills such as typing or driving

  • Classical and instrumental conditioning

• Priming: Facilitating the retrieval of an implicit memory by using cues to activate hidden memories.

• Explicit memory: A recollection that a person is aware of having or is consciously retrieved.

• Semantic memory: A subpart of declarative memory that records impersonal knowledge about the world.

• Episodic memory: A subpart of declarative memory that records personal experiences that are linked with specific times and places.

  Long-Term Memory and the Brain

• Consolidation: Process by which relatively permanent memories are formed in the brain.

  • sleep assists in consolidation

  • can be prevented with electroconvulsive shock (ECS)

  • more recent memories are more easily disrupted than older memories

• Hippocampus: Part of the limbic system associated with storing memories.

  Advantages to Long-term memory

  • Retrieval of information is faster when stored in long-term memory

  • Mundane tasks are more efficient

  • There is an increased ability to understand information and remember it later

  7.4 Remembering and Forgetting

  Factors That Improve Encoding

  Emotion

  • positive correlation between intensity of emotion and ability to remember

  • activate limbic system but not always accurate

• Flashbulb memory: Especially vivid and detailed recollection of an emotional event.

  Deep Processing

  • think about the object and its meaning, considering connections to it in memory network

  • levels of processing: Deep processing is more likely to be encoded than that which is superficial information

  Factors That Do Not Improve Encoding

• Encoding failure: Failure to store sufficient information to form a useful memory.

• Intention to Remember: Intention does not correlate with encoding material

• Repeated exposure to information: Does not produce encoding

  Measuring Our Ability to Retrieve Information

• Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state: The feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable.

• Methods of Measuring Memory: Recall, Recognition, and Relearning

• Recall: Retrieval of information with a minimum of external cues.

• Serial position effect: When remembering an ordered list, the tendency to make the most errors with middle items.

• Recognition: Ability to correctly identify previously learned information.

• Relearning: Learning again something that was previously learned. Used to measure memory of prior learning.

  Forgetting

  • occurs quickly before consolidation

  • Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting

    • information connected in LTM is not lost nearly as quickly

• Retrieval failure: Failure to access (locate) memories even though they are available (stored in memory).

• Amnesia: Inability to retrieve memories of events due to an injury or trauma.

• Retrograde amnesia: Inability to retrieve memories of events that occurred before an injury or trauma.

• Anterograde amnesia: Inability to form or retrieve memories of events that occur after an injury or trauma.

  Explaining Why Forgetting Happens

• State-dependent learning: Memory influenced by one’s physical state at the time of learning and at the time of retrieval. Improved memory occurs when the physical states match.

• Interference: The tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of older memories, and the reverse.

  • 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.

• Motivated Forgetting

  • Repression: Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.

  • Suppression: A conscious effort to put something out of mind or to keep it from awareness.

  An Updated View of Forgetting

  Active versus Passive Forgetting

• Decay theory: Proposition that the strength of memories weakens over time, making them harder to retrieve.

• Memory traces: Physical changes in neurons or brain activity that take place when memories are stored.

• Law of disuse (in memory): Proposition that memory traces weaken when memories are not periodically used or retrieved.

  7.5 The Accuracy of Long-Term Memory

• False memory: A memory that can seem accurate but is not.

  • Form when surprised, threatened, stress, prone to distortion

  • Assumptions

• Recovered Memory: Hidden memories of abuse

  • Hypnosis, guided visualization

  False memory

• Information related to retrieval cues can make its way back into working memory

  • Some will be relevant

  • Some will be irrelevant

    • gaps filled in with other material

• Source confusion (in memory): Occurs when the origins of a memory are misremembered.

• Cognitive interview: Use of various cues and strategies to improve the memory of eyewitnesses.

  • Recreating the crime scene to prove retrieval cues

  • Produces 35% more correct information than standard questioning

• Hypnosis - 80% of new memories produced through hypnosis are incorrect

  • tend to elaborate

  • fake

  7.6 Improving Your Memory

• Spaced practice: A practice schedule that alternates study periods with brief rests.

• Whole vs. Part Learning: Study the largest meaningful amount of information at one time

  • progressive-part method

    • for long complex material

• Serial Position Effect: Give extra practice to the middle information

• Massed practice: A practice schedule in which studying continues for long periods, without interruption.

• Mental images: Mental pictures or visual depictions used in memory and thinking.

• Overlearn: Continue beyond base mastery

• Mnemonic device: A strategy for enhancing memory.

• Acrostics: The first letter of the word are used to create a sentence

• Keyword method: As an aid to memory, using familiar words or images to link two items.

  7.7 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Giving Memorable Presentations

• Multimedia principle: The idea that people process words and metal images together better than they do words alone.

  • Three Assumptions

    • People process multimedia information through two sensory channels

      • visual and verbal

    • People can only process a limited amount of information through either channel at any given moment

    • People remember information best when they select important information from sensory memory, organize, and integrate it

  Help Audience Select Important Information (Presentation)

  • Eliminate distraction

  • Eliminate anything on the slide that does not support the main point

  • Limit yourself to a few main points on a slide

  • Highlight the main points you want to make each slide

  • Instead of a title, use a headline

  Help the Audience Organize Information

  • Keep your eye on the whole story

  • Make the structure of points clear

  • Talk over pictures

  Help Audience Integrate Information

  • Help audience make connections

  • Connect to LTM or your own personal connections

Chapter In Review

7.1 A General Model of Memory

7.1.1 Define Memory

Memory is an active system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information.

7.1.2 Describe the types of memory and memory processes that are outlined in the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory includes three types of memory (sensory memory, short-term or working memory, and long-term memory) that hold information for increasingly longer periods. Moving information between sensory and short-term memory required that we pay attention to information. Moving information from short-term to long-term memory required the process of encoding; getting information back into short-term memory from long-term memory requires the process of retrieval.

7.2 Sensory and Short-Term (Working) Memory

7.2.1 Describe sensory memory, including its capacity and duration

We are normally unaware of sensory memory, which takes in the information provided by the sense organs. Though its capacity is very large, information is stored in sensory memory for a very short time (2 seconds or less). Two common types of sensory memory are iconic and echoic memory. Iconic memory is a type of sensory memory that stores information coming in from the visual system. Echoic memory is sensory memory devoted to information coming into the auditory system.

7.2.2 Describe short-term (working) memory, including its capacity and duration

We are conscious of the contents of short-term memory, which can function as a “mental workbench” where information is subjected to mental operations. Initially, STM was believed to have a capacity of about seven bits of information (plus or minus two), but more recent researchers have suggested the number may be as low as four. Information can be held in STM for about a dozen seconds, though longer timeframes are possible when maintenance rehearsal is used.

7.2.3 Explain what is meant by “chunking,” and how it helps to expand the capacity of working memory

Chunking is the process by which meaningfully similar information is grouped (or “chunked”) together, increasing the capacity of STM.

7.2.4 Distinguish between rote rehearsal (rote learning) and elaborative rehearsal (elaborative encoding)

Rote rehearsal refers to the simple repetition of information; elaborative rehearsal is the process by which we try to make information more meaningful by connecting it to things that are already stored in long-term memory. For transferring information to LTM, rote rehearsal is less effective than elaborative rehearsal.

7.3 Long-Term Memory

7.3.1 Describe long-term memory, including its duration, capacity, and organization

We are not generally conscious of long-term memories. Long-term memories are relatively permanent, and LTM seems to have an almost unlimited storage capacity. It is organized as a network of information that is organized based on meaning.

7.3.2 Define the terms retrieval cue and redintegration, and explain their relation to spreading activation in the memory network

Retrieval cues refer to external prompts to remember information that has been stored in LTM. The cue causes relevant information to be retrieved from LTM and returned to working memory. Through a process of spreading activation in the LTM network, one memory then links to another associated memory, which links to another, and another, brings more information that is meaningfully related to the cue into working memory. This process is associated with redintegration (the process by which a complete memory can be retrieved from partial cues or reminders).

7.3.3 Distinguish between implicit and explicit memory

Implicit memory refers to long-term memories of which we are unaware. Some examples of implicit memories include those that stem from well-learned skills, conditioned responses (classical and instrumental responses), and priming. Explicit memories are those that are associated with our personal lives as well as factual knowledge that we have learned. Explicit memory can be further divided into semantic and episodic memory.

7.3.4 Distinguish between episodic and semantic memory

Episodic memory stores information about our personal, or autobiographical experiences. In contrast, semantic memory contains information about the world that is not connected to the time or place that information was learned.

7.3.5 Name the part of the brain that is important in memory

Parts of the brain that are important in memory include the hippocampus (where consolidation occurs), the cortex (where long-term memories are often stored), and the basal ganglia and cerebellum (where memory for motor skills appears to be localized).

7.3.6 Outline two reasons why it’s helpful to have information stored in long-term memory

Storing information in LTM is helpful because it’s more time-efficient to retrieve information from LTM than it is to look information up. In addition, stored information helps us to understand (and therefore remember) incoming information.

7.4 Remembering and Forgetting

7.4.1 Describe two factors that influence encoding and two factors that do not influence encoding

Two factors that influence encoding are emotion and whether the information is processed in a deep or shallow way. Two factors that do not appear to affect encoding are the intention to remember information and repeated exposure to information.

7.4.2 Name three ways that we can measure memory

Memories may be revealed by recall, recognition, and relearning. In recall, memories are retrieved without explicit cues, as in an essay exam. A common test of recognition is the multiple-choice question. In relearning, material that seems to be forgotten is learned again, and memory is revealed by a savings score (the amount of time saved when relearning information). Recall, recognition, and relearning mainly measure explicit memories.

7.4.3 Name five factors that contribute to forgetting

Five factors that contribute to forgetting include atypical brain function (e.g., dementia; amnesia), cue-dependent forgetting, state-dependent learning, interference (proactive and retroactive), and motivated forgetting.

7.4.4 Distinguish between active and passive forgetting

Active forgetting refers to purposeful forgetting that is carried out to keep the amount of information we process reasonable and to avoid creating memories of trivial things that are unlikely to be helpful over the long term. Passive forgetting is characterized as the decay that occurs when memories are not retrieved often.

7.5 The Accuracy of Long-Term Memory

7.5.1 Explain the origins of false and inaccurate memories

False and inaccurate memories emerge as a result of the fact that memories are actively reconstructed each time they are retrieved from LTM. During this process, gaps in memory can be unconsciously ”filled in” with prior knowledge, expectations, beliefs, and stereotypes, resulting in memories that may be inaccurate or false, but that seems accurate.

7.5.2 Describe three factors that might improve confidence in eyewitness testimony

Things that might improve confidence in eyewitness testimony include changing the way police lineups are carried out, using cognitive interviews when interviewing suspects, and eliminating consideration of eyewitness or victim memories that emerge only through hypnosis.

7.6 Improving Your Memory

7.6.1 Name up to eight ways that could be helpful in ensuring that you will be able to encode and remember information

Memory can be improved through chunking, elaborative rehearsal (or elaborative encoding), spaced practice, using mental images, whole (versus part) learning, considering the serial position effect, overlearning, and the use of mnemonics.

7.6.2 Define mnemonics, and provide four examples of mnemonic devices

Mnemonic devices use bizarre or exaggerated verbal associations and mental images to link new information with familiar memories already stored in LTM. Some examples of mnemonic devices include acrostics, the keyword method, and stories or chains (including the method of loci).

7.7 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Giving Memorable Presentations

7.7.1 Define the multimedia principle

Multimedia presentations involve both visual and auditory information; however, we can process only very limited amounts of information through the auditory and visual channels at a specific time. The multimedia principle states that people learn more from words and graphics together than they do from words alone.

7.7.2 Create a plan that will make your multimedia presentation more memorable

The audience will remember information from a presentation best when you select important information, organize it in a meaningful way, and integrate it with other existing information. You can help the audience select important information by eliminating irrelevant background distractions and information from slides, putting a few main points per slide and highlighting them, and using headlines rather than titles for each slide. You can help your audience organize information by outlining your presentation as a story, clearly structuring points, and making complementary use of the auditory and visual channels. You can help the audience integrate information by highlighting connections between information and external knowledge.