Watch video: Remembering and forgetting psych crash course 14 Memory is like a web that we slowly peice together but not everything sticks to the wall

Video Notes: crash course memory

Word of the chapter: reconstruction & Schema

Where are your memories? (hippocampus and other parts of the brain)

• Your Brain Doesn’t contain memories. It IS Memories-wires

• Where Are Memories Stored? MIT researchers have shown, for the first time ever, that memory bits are stored in specific brain cells

• Where Are Old memories Stored in the Brain? - A new study suggests that the location of a recollection in the brain varies based on how old that recollection is - Scientific American

Dont think abt just the neurons but everything peicing itself together to create the recolleciton of that bit of information.

The Structure of Human Memory: What is Memory?

• Information-Processing Theory

• How do we store information in computers and then they molded today

  • (Klutzy, 1984)

  • Makes use of modern computer science and related feilds

  • Characterizes the brain and spinal cord as “hardware”

  • Provides models that help psychologists understand the processes involved in memory (Bishop, 2005)

The structure of Human memory: Information Processing Theory

• Memory involves 3 distinct processes

  • Encoding

  • Storage

  • Retrieval

• Memory

  • one of many cognitive processes that includes the encoding, storage, and retrieval (recollection, recall, remembering) of information.

  • Redundant!!

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin

• Proposed the most utilized theory of memory, characterizing memory as 3 different, interacting memory systems:

  • 1) Sensory memory

  • 2) Short-term memory

  • 3) Long-term memory

The Structure of Human Memory

Sensory memory

• Briefly holds information from the senses

  • visual information: for a fraction of a second

  • Auditory information: up to 2 seconds

Short-term memory

(focus on one thing at a time to remember everything so you don’t have disruptions in information processing)

• Capacity of short-term memory: seven (plus or minus 2) items for less than thirty seconds without rehearsal

• Working memory: a system of sensory memory, helps us understand information, remember it, problem solve or to communicate (what we’re conscious of at any moment).

• Duration: Memories are lost in less than 30 seconds unless rehearsed

Managing Short-Term Memory (STM)

* Leila don’t forget that STM means short-term memory you dumbass

• Displacement

  • occurs when STM is full

  • new incoming item pushes out an existing item

• Chunking (strategy)

  • grouping bits of information into larger units

  • Makes more efficient use of short-term memory

Short-Term Memory: Levels of Processing in Working Memory

• Maintenance Rehearsal

  • “shallow” processing

  • encoding based on superficial features of information

• Elaborative Rehearsal

  • “deep” processing

  • encoding based on the meaning of information

  • requires added intentional effort, focus and concentration

Short-Term Memory: Automaticity

• Automaticity

  • instantaneous memory/ easily able to recall

    • ability to recall information from long-term memory without effort

    • allows working memory to be freed up for other tasks

    • Memory abilities vary from individual to individual

The Structure of Human Memory: Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Virtually unlimited capacity

• Contains vast stores of a persons’s permanent or relatively permanent memories

• Main Subsystems of LTM

  • Declarative memory (explicit): declared or stated

  • Non-declarative memory (implicit)

Long-Term Memory: Declarative Memory

• Explicit memory: clear and complete

  • Stores facts, information, personal life events

  • Can be brought to mind verbally or in the form of images

• Episodic Memory

  • records events as they have been subjectively experienced

• Semantic Memory

  • stores vernal knowledge or objective facts and information

  • more like an encyclopedia or dictionary than a personal diary

Long-Term Memory: Non-Declarative Memory

• Also called implicit memory

• Stores motor skills, habits, and simple classically conditioned responses

• Does not require conscious thought

Closer Look at Retrieval: Measuring Retrieval

• Recall

  • task in which a person must produce required information by accessing memory, requires a more involved thought process

• Retrieval Cue

  • any stimulus or bit of information that aids in retrieving particular information from long-term memory

• Recognition

  • Merely identifying familiar material having been encountered before i.e. multiple choice exams

Note: you can’t however, retrieve a memory that’s not there!

Influences on Retrieval

• Serial Position Effect

  • for information learned in a sequence, recall is better for items at the beginning and end than for items in the middle of sequence

    • better to rememberbeginning or end of a list

• Primacy effect

  • tendency to recall the first items in a sequence more easily than the middle items

• Recency effect

  • tendency to recall the last items in a sequence more easily than the middle items

Memory retrieval

• Context Effect

  • we recall material more easily in the same environment in which it was learned (in the same context)

• Golden and Baddeley (1975)

  • Participants memorized words underwater or on land

• State-Dependent Memory Effect

  • the tendency to recall information better if one is in the same pharmacological or psycological state (mental state) as one was when the information was encoded

  • The effect appears to be greater for episodic than for semantic memories

  • Stronger when positive emotions are involved

Remembering as Reconstruction: The Process of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction

  • An account of an event that has been pieced together from a few highlights

  • Sir Fredrick Bartlett (1886-1969)

    • Reconstructive memory processes employ schemas (frameworks of knowledge we have about people, objects, and events). We use schemas to understand the world around us

    • concepts, understandings, narratives etc

    • Schema-based processing is even more evident when processing more complex information

    • Using schemas to reconstruct memories can lead to inaccuracies

    • Discussion: subjectiveness and contamination

• Source memory

  • a recollection of the circumstances in which a memory was formed

  • Source monitoring

    • practice of intentionality keeping track of the sources of incoming information

    • The memory system tends to focus on the meaning of information rather than its source

• Flashbulb Memories

  • Memories of particularly shocking/powerful, emotion-provoking events

  • Include information about the source from which the information was acquired

  • reconstructive in nature

  • Essentially a subcategory of source memory

• Autobiographical Memories (also episodic memory)

  • recollections that include an account of the events of person’s own life

  • reconstructive in nature and include factual, emotional, and interpretive information

  • positive bias

    • Pleasant autobiographical memories are more easily recalled than unpleasant ones.

    • Studies show that memories of unpleasant events become more emotionally positive over time (????)

Influences on Reconstructive Memory

• Expertise

  • possessing extensive background knowledge that is relevant to a reconstructive memory task

  • the more you know about a certain topic, the more likely you’ll recall information

• Sociocultural factors

  • may influence ability to remember certain kinds of material

Forgetting: Ebbinghause and the Curve of Forgetting

• Learned and relearned more Ethan 1,200 lists of nonsense syllables to discover how rapidly forgetting occurs

• Curve of Forgetting

  • Most forgetting occurs soon after learning, then tapers off

  • Note: The less meaningful the material is to you, the more likely you’ll forget

Forgetting: Why Do We Forget?

• Encoding Failure

  • occurs when information was never put into long-term memory.

  • In certain instances, encoding failure may be the result of distraction, disruption

  • Remember the traffic light?

• Decay Theory: a physiological change or deterioration in the neurons and neuronal pathways involved in the formation, storage and reconstruction of memories

  • some memories, if not used, fade with time and may eventually disappear, or not!

  • Bing Bong from Inside Out

retroactive v proactive

Forget it (I forgot what I forgot tbh)

• Consolidation: physiological process by which encoded information is stored in memory, also explained in theories of dreams and the need for sleep.

• Consolidation Failure

  • disruption in the consolidation process that prevents long-term memory from forming

• Prospective Forgetting (avoidance learning)

  • not remembering to carry out some intended action in the future: taking out the trash

  • Most likely to forget action perceived as unpleasant

  • “Forgetting” to read the chapter, for instance

• Retrieval Failure

  • not remembering something one is certain of knowing

  • tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon

    • knowing information has been learned but being unable to retrieve it

    • may be due to the physiological process of reconstruction

Intentional Forgetting

• Motivated Forgetting (intentional)

  • suppression or repression in an effort to protect oneself from material that is painful, frightening, or otherwise unpleasant (Freud’s repression).

  • Mike’s memory meaning theory. Who decides what out memories mean or for that matter, what ANYTHING means!??!?

Biology and Memory

• Hippocampus

  • plays an important role in forming episodic memories

  • LTP: long term potentiation, increased efficiency of neural transmission at the synapses. increased stimulation strengthens processing

• Our strongest and most lasting memories are usually fueled by emotion

• Epinephrine (adrenalin) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline) activate the amygdala (sympathetic nervous system activation)

  • help imprint powerful, enduring memories for threatening events

  • recall the “fight-or-flight response”

• Excessive levels of cortisol can interfere with memory such as when you’re under chronic stress

• Estrogen appears to improve working memory efficiency in pre-menopausal women

Memory Loss

• Amnesia

  • partial or complete loss of memory

  • due to loss of consciousness, brain damage, or some psychological cause

  • Anterograde amnesia: inability to form new long-term memories

  • Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for experiences that occurred shortly before a loss of consciousness: involves episodic rather than semantic memories

• Dementia: a collection of neurological disorders in which degenerative processes in the brain diminish people’s ability to remember and process information

  • altered personality and behavior

  • individuals with dementia can lose episodic and semantic memories

  • can result from cerebral arteriosclerosis, chronic alcoholism, strokes or other insult to the brain

• Alzheimer’s Disease

  • a form of dementia caused by degeneration of brain cells and nerve connections, making it progressively more difficult to do ordinary things like move around, swallow and feed oneself. It is thought to be caused by the abnormal build-up of proteins in and around brain cells as well as other causes.

  • High IQ plus lifelong intellectual activity are thought to delay or lessen symptoms of Alzheimer’s

Memory in Legal and Therapeutic Settings

• Because most of human memory is reconstructive;

  • Eyewitness testimony is highly subjecttoerror

  • should always be viewed with caution (Loftus, 1979)

• The physiological stress and fear of being a crime victim or witness affects memory encoding

• Re: interaction between the amygdala and hippocampus

Memory Contamination

• Misinformation Effect

  • erroneous recollections of witnessed events

  • results from information learned after the fact 9retroactive interference) or from other sources

Repressed Memory

• Repression : Freud

• “defense mechanism”

  • process by which traumatic memories are buried in the unconscious

  • Hypnosis and guided imagery are often used to help clients recover repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse

  • Critics argue that therapists may sometimes implant false memories in clients

• Infantile Amnesia

  • relative inability of older children and adults to recall events from the first few years of life

  • hippocampus in th brain is not yet fully developed!