Memory

Encoding: getting information into brain

Storage: retaining the information

Retrieval: getting information out

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Types of long term memory

Effortful Processing Strategies

1. Rehearsal: repetition
2. Chunking: grouping
3. Mnemonics: acronyms, songs, imagery, rhymes, etc.
4. Hierarchies
5. Deep processing: affects encoding and long term memory (Levels of Processing Theory by Craik and Tulving)

• Shallow processing: structure or appearance, just repetition
• Deep processing: acoustic (sound) → imagery, semantic (meaning) from worst to best method; making personally meaningful connections

1. Distributed practice: space out learning so more information will be retained (Spacing Effect)

• Ebbinghaus forgetting curve: retention of information rapidly declined

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Types of memory retrieval

1. Recall: retrieving information with effort

2. Recognition: identifying answer among choices

3. Relearning: learning 2nd time is quicker than 1st time

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Effects on memory retrieval

1. Priming: unconscious associations that help retrieve memories
2. Context dependent memory: easier to retrieve information if it is in the same place as where it was learned

• Ex) deja vu

1. Stage-congruent memory: states of consciousness (sleepy/under influence of drugs) → information if recalled better if person is in the same state as when it is was learned
2. Mood congruent memory: recall memories consistent with current mood
3. Serial position effect: tendency to recall first and last items from a list (middle items tend to be forgotten)
4. Primacy Effect: items recalled later → tend to remember first items best
5. Recency Effect: items recalled immediately → tend to remember last items best
6. Spacing effect: distributed practice is better than cramming

Forgetting

• Failure to encode: sensory memory, short term/working memory
• Failure to retrieve: long term memory
• Decay: physical phenomenon when you don’t use memory for a long time
• Interference:
  • Proactive interference (1st interferes with 2nd)
  • Retroactive interference (2nd interferes with 1st)
• Freud: motivated forgetting
  • Ex) Repression of memories
• False memories/constructed memories: memory of event that did not happen/incorrect details
  • Elizabeth Loftus: cars hit vs. smashed study
  • More likely with children when fed misinformation

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Infantile amnesia: generally don’t have memories before 3 years old because hippocampus is not fully developed

Anterograde amnesia: can’t remember new events

Retrograde amnesia: can’t remember old memories

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Brain

• Hippocampus: explicit memories
• Cerebellum: implicit memory formation (conditioning)
• Basal ganglia: implicit memories (procedural)
• Amygdala: involved in encoding flashbulb memories
  • Flashbulb memories: clear memory of surprising, consequential, or biologically significant event

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP): biological basis of long term memory formation

• Neurons strengthen synaptic connections with each other as they signal (type of neuroplasticity)
• Postsynaptic neuron becomes more sensitive to presynaptic neuron's messages

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