What is Memory?

1. Storing and retrieving information over time

   -Always changing

   -can not tell the difference between false memories and real ones

2. The process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved

Memory is a Constructive Process

• Organizing and shaping information during encoding, storage, and retrieval of memories

• Memory is not a video recording or an unchanging library of experiences. Memories can change over time.

Memory Models

• 3 processes / 3 functions

• 3 systems / 3 types

  1. Encoding → transforming info so you can use it

  -info your brain can understand

  2. Storage → sensory, stm, ltm

     -Keeping it in memory (need to pay attention)

3. Retrieval

4. Can get information out of storage to use

   ---

   Level of Processing

Shallow Processing

happens when you consider questions about the superficial characteristics of the material

Deep Processing

happens when you consider questions about the significance of the material

do something with the information, ex. E6: a pink Elephant with 6 legs

Types of memory storage

Sensory Memory

• The initial, momentary storage of information, lasting only an instant (3-4 seconds)

• what we see

• what we hear

• selective attention is important

Short-Term (aka working memory) Memory

• what are you thinking about right now?

• may hold approximately 7 (plus or minus 2) chunks of information

  -A chunk is a meaningful grouping (effortful processing)

  -when more info comes in → displacement occurs

  -holds information for approx less than 30 seconds

  -need to rehearse (effortful processing)

Contemporary Approaches To Memory

• Working memory

  -view of short-term memory as an active “workspace”

  -you use strategies to understand, remember and manipulate

  -Mental workspace

  -Level of processing

The 3 systems of Memory: Long-Term Memory

• A storehouse of almost unlimited capacity & unlimited duration

• Even though stored can be lost, forgotten, inaccurate

Improving STM & LTM

• Two kinds of Rehearsal (improves encoding)

  • Maintenance rehearsal (shallow)

    • occurs when information is repeated and this keeps it in short-term memory

  • Elaborative rehearsal (deep)

    • occurs when information is considered and organized into categories (like chunking)

    • make it meaningful

What can go wrong? Why do we forget? Why are we not able to remember?

• Encoding failure/Absentmindedness

  • never put it in our memory in the first place

  • we didn't use selective attention

• Transcience

  • use it or lose it

  • more likely in sensory or short-term memory

  • connections between neurons deteriorate over time

• Interference

  • competing information

    • proactive

    • reteroactive

Proactive Interference

• Information learned earlier interferes with recall of newer material

Consolidation failure

• Loss of consciousness

Motivated forgetting

• protect from anxiety (forgetting the dentist because you don’t like dentists)

Misplaced memories

• can’t find memories

Memories as Reconstruction

• Constructive process

  • Processes in which memories are influenced by the meaning that we give to events

• Schemas

  • Organized bodies of information stored in memory that bias the way new information is interpreted, stored and recalled

Recalling Long-Term Memories

• Memory in the courtroom

  • repressed memory

  • false memory

  • misinformation effect

Elizabeth Loftus - How reliable is your memory?

• memory is reconstructed, like Wikipedia, you can change it so can others

• made simulated crime and asked observers questions but would change the words of the question

• smashed made it seem faster and broken glass pieces

• soldiers training prisoners of war, being abused for 30 minutes then later had to identify, but misinformation was fed and changed the memory

• misinformation contaminates our memory and changes it

• used suggestion and planted false memories, ¼ people planted

• if you implant false memory how much does it alter current thoughts?

Neuroscience of Memory

• Engram

  • physical memory trace

  • still researching

  • certain structures, areas in the brain specialize in different types of memory-related activities

• Hippocampus

  • initial encoding & consolidation

• Amygdala

  • Emotion & fear

• Long-term potentiation

  • Certain neural pathways become easily excited while learning something new

  • number of synapses between neurons increases

  • this is how memories are consolidated

    • fixed and stable in LTM

    • Reconsolidation happens each time remember something

    • this process happens in many areas of the brain where sensory information is processed

    • memory traces throughout the brain

Study Habits That Aid Memory

• Organization

  • make it meaningful

• Overleaning

  • study beyond the minimum

• Spaced vs Massed Practice

  • means no cramming

  • remember more with less study time

• Active vs Passive

  • use elaborate rehearsal

  • test yourself

  • pull information out