AP Psychology: Module 33

  • Anterograde Amnesia: the inability to form new memories

    • You can recall your past, but will not be able to remember your future.

  • Retrograde Amnesia: the inability to retrieve information from one’s past

    • You cannot remember past events or information stored in your long-term memory.

  • Reasons that we may forget include:

    • Encoding failure

      • We cannot remember what we have not encoded.

      • Affected by age — the brain areas active in encoding are more active in young adults than older adults and even kids, which explains age-related memory decline.

      • Without encoding effort, many potential memories struggle to form

    • Storage decay

      • When we forget something even after we have already encoded it, as stored memories can decay.

      • E.g. learning a new language’s vocabulary

      • Forgetting something is initially rapid, but levels off over time

    • Retrieval failure

      • When we fail to retrieve memories even though they are encoded — they are not forgotten.

      • Retrieval cues help us to remember memories we have failed to retrieve.

      • Retrieval problems often stem from interference and even from motivated forgetting.

  • Proactive interference: this occurs when prior learning disrupts the recall of new information.

    • For example, if you buy a new combination lock, your memory of the old combination may interfere with learning and retrieving the new one.

  • Retroactive interference: this occurs when new learning disrupts the recall of older information.

    • For example, if someone sings new lyrics to the tune of an old song, you may have trouble remembering the original words.

    • Information presented in the hour before sleep suffers less retroactive interference because the opportunity for interfering events is minimized.

  • One type of motivated forgetting is Sigmund Freud’s theory of repression.

    • Repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

    • Many think repression rarely, or ever, even occurs

  • Our memory is not like a “video camera,” as we infer our past from stored information plus what we later imagined, experienced, saw, and heard.

    • We do not just retrieve memories but also reweave them.

  • Reconsolidation: a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.

    • Like the telephone game — the message gets altered each time it is “replayed”

    • This means that sometimes when memories are often retrieved and replayed, they get altered so much that they become false.

  • Misinformation effect: this occurs when misleading information has distorted one’s memory of an event.

    • When exposed to subtle misleading information, we may misremember the event.

    • This effect is so powerful that it can influence later attitudes and behaviors.

    • Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories.

    • This occurs because visualizing something and actually perceiving something both activate similar brain areas.

  • Source amnesia: faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined.

    • Also called source misattribution.

    • Along with the misinformation effect, source amnesia is at the heart of many false memories.

    • For example, musicians may think they came up with a revolutionary idea or lyrics for their song from their imagination, when they may be unintentionally plagiarizing it.

    • Helps to explain deja vu.

  • Deja Vu: the eerie sense that you have already experienced what you are doing beforehand.

    • IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF A “PAST LIFE!!!”

    • Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger the retrieval of an earlier experience.

  • We cannot tell if a memory is real based on how it “feels” because memories can be misleading and fake memories are persistent.

  • Some science-backed ways to help improve your memory of something:

    • Rehearse repeatedly:

      • Utilize the spacing effect and distributed practice

      • Study actively (testing yourself)

    • Make the material meaningful:

      • Make a network of retrieval clues, such as by taking notes in your own words and forming associations

      • Apply concepts to your own life

      • Relate material to what you have experienced

    • Activate retrieval cues:

      • remember the importance of context-dependent and state-dependent memory

      • mentally recreate the situation and mood in which your original learning occurred

      • allow one thought to cue the next

    • Use mnemonics:

      • make up a story that incorporates vivid images of the items

      • chunk information into acronyms

      • create rhymes

    • Minimize proactive and retroactive interference:

      • study before sleep

      • do not schedule back-to-back study times for topics that are likely to interfere with each other, such as Spanish and French

    • Sleep more:

      • during sleep, the brain reorganizes and consolidates information for long-term memory.

        • disrupted by sleep deprivation