AP Psychology: Chapter 6: Memory

Memory

• Memory can be defined as an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage
• Memory can be defined as an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage

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Models of Memory

• In the levels-of-processing model of memory, information that gets more deeply processed is more likely to be remembered
• In the parallel distributed processing model of memory, information is simultaneously stored across an interconnected neural network that stretches across the brain
• Short-term memory is where information is held while it is conscious and being used. It holds about 7 plus or minus two chunks of information and at least about 30 seconds  without rehearsal
• working memory is an active system responsible for processing the information in STM
• STM  is easily lost through decay or interference
• Long-term memory is a system in which memories are to be kept more or less permanently or stored and is Unlimited in capacity in relatively permanent in duration
• Information that is more deeply processed, or processed according to meaning, will be retained and retrieved more efficiently
• Procedural memories are memories of skills habits and conditioned responses. Declarative memories are memories for general facts and personal experiences and include both semantic memories and episodic memories
• Implicit memories are difficult to bring into conscious awareness, whereas explicit memories are those that a person is aware of possessing
• LTM is organized in the form of semantic networks, or nodes of related information spreading out from a central piece of knowledge

Getting It Out: Retrieval of Long-Term Memories

• Retrieval cues are words, and meanings encoded at the same time as a new memory

• Encoding specificity occurs when physical surroundings become encoded as retrieval cues for specific memories

• State-dependent learning occurs when physiological or psychological states become encoded as retrieval cues for memories formed while in those states

• Recall is a type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be " pulled " out of memory with few or no cues, whereas recognition involves matching information with stored images or facts

• The serial position effect, or primacy or recency effect, occurs when the first items and the last items in a list of information are recalled more efficiently than items n the middle of the list

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• Classic Studies in Psychology: Elizabeth Loftus and Eyewitnesses Loftus and others have found that people constantly update and revise their memories of events Part of this revision may include adding information acquired later to a previous memory. That later information may also be in error, further

  contaminating the earlier memory

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• Automatic encoding of some kinds of information requires very little effort to place information into long-term memory
• Memory for particularly emotional or traumatic events can lead to the formation of flashbulb memories, memories that seem as vivid and detailed as if the person were looking at a snapshot of the event but that are no more accurate than any other memories

The Reconstructive Nature of Long-Term Memory Retrieval: How Reliable Are Memories?

• Memories are reconstructed from the various bits of information that have been stored away in different places at the time of encoding in a process called constructive processing

• Hindsight bias occurs when people falsely believe that they knew the outcome of some event because they have included knowledge of the event's true outcome into their memories of the event itself

• The misinformation effect refers to the tendency of people who are asked misleading questions or given misleading information to incorporate that information into their memories of a particular event

• Rather than improving memory retrieval, hypnosis makes the creation of false memories more likely

• False memory syndrome is the creation of false or inaccurate memories through suggestion, especially while hypnotized

• Pezdek and colleagues assert that false memories are more likely to be formed for plausible false events than for implausible ones

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  What Were We Talking About? Forgetting

• Ebbinghaus found that information is mostly lost within 1 hour after learning and then gradually fades away. This is known as the curve of forgetting

• Some " forgetting " is actually a failure to encode information. Memory trace decay theory assumes the presence of a physical memory trace that decays with disuse over time

• Forgetting in LTM is most likely due to proactive or retroactive interference

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Memory and the Brain: The Physical Aspects of Memory

• Evidence suggests that procedural memories are stored in the cerebellum, whereas short-term memories are stored in the prefrontal and temporal lobes of the cortex
• Semantic and episodic memories may be stored in the frontal and temporal lobes as well but in different locations than short-term memory, whereas memory for fear of objects is most likely stored in the amygdala
• Consolidation consists of the physical changes in neurons that take place during the formation of a memory
• The hippocampus appears to be responsible for the of new storage declarative long-term memories. If it is removed, the ability to store any new factual information is completely lost
• In retrograde amnesia, memory for the past ( prior to the injury ) is lost, which can be a loss of only minutes or a loss of several years
• ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy, can disrupt consolidation and cause retrograde amnesia
• In anterograde amnesia, memory for anything new becomes impossible, although old memories may still be retrievable
• Most people cannot remember events that occurred before age 2 or 3. This is called infantile amnesia and is most likely due to the implicit nature of infant memory

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Applying Psychology to Everyday Life: Current Research in Alzheimer's Disease

• The primary memory difficulty in Alzheimer's is anterograde amnesia, although retrograde amnesia can also occur as the disease progresses
• There are various drugs in use or in development for use in stopping the progression of Alzheimer's disease

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Vocabulary

• infantile amnesia: the inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3
• autobiographical memory: the memory for events and facts related to one's personal life story
• false positive: error of recognition in which people think that they recognize some stimulus that is not actually in memory
• automatic encoding: the tendency of certain kinds of information to enter long-term memory with little or no effortful encoding
• recency effect: the tendency to remember the information at the end of a body of information better than the information at the beginning of it
• recall: type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be "pulled" from memory with very few external cues
• recognition: the ability to match a piece or a stimulus to a stored image or fact
• serial position effect: the tendency of information at the beginning and end of a body of information to be remembered more accurately than information in the middle of the body of information
• primacy effect: the tendency to remember the information at the beginning of a body of information better than the information that follows
• encoding specificity: the tendency for the memory of information to be improved if related information (such as surroundings or physiological state) available when the memory is first formed is also available when the memory is being retrieved
• retrieval cue: a stimulus for remembering
• semantic network model: a model of memory organization that assumes information is stored in the brain in a connected fashion, with concepts that are related stored physically closer to each other than concepts that are not highly related
• semantic memory: type of declarative memory containing general knowledge, such as knowledge of language and information learned in formal education
• episodic memory: type of declarative memory containing personal information not readily available to others, such as daily activities and events
• explicit memory: memory that is consciously known, such as declarative memory
• implicit memory: memory that is not easily brought into conscious awareness, such as procedural memory
• declarative memory: type of long-term memory containing information that is conscious and known
• elaborative rehearsal: a method of transferring information from STM into LTM by making that information meaningful in some way
• procedural (non-declarative) memory: type of long-term memory including memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses. These memories are not conscious but are implied to exist because they affect conscious behavior
• anterograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories
• long-term memory (LTM): the system of memory into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently
• retrograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards, or loss of memory for the past
• maintenance rehearsal: the practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in one's head in order to maintain it in short-term memory
• eidetic imagery: the ability to access a visual memory for 30 seconds or more
• echoic memory: the brief memory of something a person has just heard
• sensory memory: the very first stage of memory, the point at which information enters the nervous system through the sensory systems
• iconic memory: visual sensory memory, lasting only a fraction of a second

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