Memory

Encoding: getting information into brain

Storage: retaining the information

Retrieval: getting information out

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

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

• Ebbinghaus forgetting curve: retention of information rapidly declined

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

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

3. 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

4. Mood congruent memory: recall memories consistent with current mood

5. Serial position effect: tendency to recall first and last items from a list (middle items tend to be forgotten)

6. Primacy Effect: items recalled later → tend to remember first items best

7. Recency Effect: items recalled immediately → tend to remember last items best

8. 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

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

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