Memory

1. Chapter 8 Memory PSYCHOLOGY David G. Myers C. Nathan DeWall Twelfth Edition

2. Chapter Overview • Studying and Encoding Memories • Storing and Retrieving Memories • Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory

3. Studying Memory (part 1) • Memory • Persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information • Measures of memory • Recall:Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time • Recognition: Identifying items previously learned • Relearning:Learning something more quickly when you encounter it a second or later time

4. Ebbinghaus’s Retention Curve • Ebbinghaus found that the more times he practiced a list of nonsense syllables on Day 1, the less time he required to relearn it on Day 2. • Speed of relearning is one measure of memory retention (From Baddeley, 1982.)

5. Studying Memory (part 2) • Psychologists use memory models to think and communicate about memory. • Information-processing model • Compares human memory to computer operations • Involves three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval • Connectionism information-processing model • Focuses on multitrack, parallel processing • Views memories as products of interconnected neural networks

6. Memory Models (part 1) • Three processing stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin model • We record to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory. • We process information into short-term memory, where we encode it through rehearsal. • Information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval.

7. A Modified Three-Stage Information-Processing Model of Memory

8. Memory Models (part 2) • Atkinson-Shiffrin model’s updated concepts • Working memory: To stress the active processing occurring in the second memory stage • Automatic processing: To address the processing of information outside of conscious awareness

9. Memory Models (part 3) Working memory • Involves newer understanding of short-term memory • Focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual–spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory • Is handled by a central executive (Baddeley, 2002)

10. Dual-Track Memory: Effortful Versus Automatic Processing • Dual-track memory system • Explicit memories (declarative memories) of conscious facts and experiences encoded through conscious, effortful processing • Implicit memories (nondeclarative memories) that form through automatic processes and bypass the conscious encoding track

11. Encoding Memories • Automatic processing and implicit memories • Implicit memories include automatic skills and classically conditioned associations. • Information is automatically processed about • Space • Time • Frequency • Effortful processing and explicit memories • With experience and practice, explicit memories become automatic.

12. Sensory Memory • What is sensory memory? • First stage in forming explicit memories • Immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system • Iconic memory: Picture-image memory • Echoic memory: Sound memory

13. Short-Term Memory Capacity • Short-term memory: Activated memory that holds a few items briefly (such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing) before the information is stored or forgotten • George Miller (1956) • Magical number seven: Most people can store seven bits of information (give or take two). • Baddeley and colleagues (1975) • Without distraction, most people can remember seven digits or six letters or five words. • Working memory • Capacity varies by age and and other factors.

14. Short-Term Memory Decay

15. Effortful Processing Strategies • Chunking: Organization of items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically • Mnemonics: Memory aids, especially techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices • Hierarchies: Organization of items into a few broad categories that are divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts

16. Distributed Practice (part 1) • Spaced study and self-assessment • Spacing effect: Encoding is more effective when it is spread over time. • Massed practice: Produces speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence • Distributed practice: Produces better long-term recall

17. Distributed Practice (part 2) • Testing effect: Retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced effect • Testing improves learning and memory (Brown et al., 2014; Pan et al., 2015; Trumbo et al., 2016). • Testing protects our memory from the harmful effects of stress.

18. Levels of Processing • Verbal information is processed at different levels that affect long-term retention. • Shallow processing encodes information on a very basic level (a word’s letters) or a more intermediate level (a word’s sound). • Deep processing encodes information semantically based on word meaning.

19. Making Material Personally Meaningful • If new information is neither meaningful nor related to our experience, we have trouble processing it. • Most people excel at remembering personally relevant information. • Members of individualist Western cultures tend to exhibit the self-reference effect. • Members of collectivist Eastern cultures tend to remember self-relevant and family-relevant information equally well (Sparks et al., 2016).

20. Retaining Information in the Brain • Past research • The whole of a person’s past is contained in memory—waiting to be relived. • Newer findings • Flashbacks during surgery are new creations of the stressed brain. • Information is not stored in a single, specific spot. • Perception, language, emotions, and more require brain networks for their storage.

21. Explicit-Memory System: Hippocampus and Frontal Lobes • Dedicated to explicit memory formation • Registers and temporarily holds elements of explicit memories before moving them to other brain regions for long-term storage • Memory consolidation: Neural storage of long-term memories

22. Explicit-Memory System • Semantic memory: Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems • Episodic memory: Explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems • Memory consolidation: The neural storage of a long-term memory

23. Implicit-Memory System: The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia • Implicit memory system • The cerebellum plays an important role in forming and storing memories created by classical conditioning. • Memories of physical skills are also implicit memories. • The basal ganglia help form memories for these skills. • Infantile amnesia • Conscious memory of the first three years of life is blank. • Command of language and a well-developed hippocampus are needed to form memories.

24. Key Memory Structures in the Brain

25. The Amygdala, Emotions, and the Brain • Excitement or stress triggers hormone production and provokes the amygdala to engage memory. • Emotions often persist with or without conscious awareness. • Emotional arousal causes an outpouring of stress hormones, which enhance activity in the brain’s memory-forming areas. • Flashbulb memories occur via emotion-triggered hormonal changes and rehearsal.

26. Synaptic Changes • Long-term potentiation (LTP) • Increase in a synapse’s firing potential • After LTP, the brain will not erase memories • Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory • Kandel and Schwartz (1982) • Pinpointed changes in sea slugs’ neural connections • With learning, more serotonin is released and cell efficiency increases—that is, the number of synapses increases.

27. Doubled Receptor Sites

28. Our Two Memory Systems

29. Memory Retrieval Cues (part 1) • Retrieval cues • Priming • Context-dependent memory • State-dependent memory • Serial position effect

30. Memory Retrieval Cues (part 2) • Memory retrieval • Memories are held in storage by a web of associations. • Retrieval cues serve as anchor points for pathways to memories suspended in this web. • The best retrieval cues come from associations formed at the time a memory is encoded. • Priming • Activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

31. Priming: Awakening Associations • After seeing or hearing the word rabbit, we are more likely to spell the spoken word as h-a-r-e. • Associations unconsciously activate related associations—a called priming. (Adapted from Bower, 1986.)

32. Memory Retrieval Cues (part 3) • Context-dependent memory • Recall of specific information is improved when the contexts present at encoding and at retrieval are the same. • Encoding specificity principle • Cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping recall.

33. Memory Retrieval Cues (part 4) • State-dependent memory • The tendency to recall events consistent with current good or bad mood (mood-congruent memory) • Mood-congruent memory • The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood • Serial position effect • The tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list

34. When Do We Forget? • Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. • When we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it.

35. Forgetting and the Two-Track Mind • Humans have two distinct memory systems controlled by different parts of the brain. • Forgetting has several causes: • Encoding failure • Storage decay • Retrieval failure • Interference • Motivated forgetting

36. Forgetting: Encoding and Storage Decay • Encoding failure • Age: Encoding lag is linked to age-related memory decline. • Attention: Failure to notice or encode contributes to memory failure. • Storage decay • Course of forgetting is initially rapid, but then levels off with time. • Physical changes in the brain occur as memories form (memory trace).

37. Encoding Failure

38. Storage Decay and Retrieval Failure • Events and memories may not be available because they were never acquired. • Memories may have been discarded due to stored memory decay. • Insufficient information to access memories may put them out of reach. • Often, forgetting is not “memories faded” but rather “memories unretrieved.” • Retrieval problems often contribute to the occasional memory failures of older adults.

39. Retrieval Failure

40. Forgetting (part 1) • Interference • Proactive: Older memories make it more difficult to remember new information. • Retroactive: New learning disrupts memory for older information.

41. Forgetting (part 2) • Motivated forgetting • Freud: Repressed memories protect a person’s self-concept and minimize anxiety. • Today: Attempts to forget are more likely when information is neutral, not emotional.

42. Memory Construction Errors (part 1) • Misinformation and imagination effects • Misinformation effect: A memory is corrupted by misleading information. • Imagination effect: Repeatedly imagining fake actions and events can create false memories.

43. Memory Construction Errors (part 2) • Source amnesia (source misattribution) • Faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagine • Déjà vu • The sense that “I’ve experienced this before” • Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

44. Discerning True and False Memories • False memories feel like real memories and can be persistent, but are usually limited to the gist of the event. • False memories are often a result of faulty eyewitness testimony.

45. Children’s Eyewitness Recall • Ceci and Bruck • Researchers studied the effect of suggestive interviewing techniques. • Approximately 58 percent of preschoolers produced false stories about unexperienced events. • Children often accurately recall events and actors. • When questioned by a neutral person • When asked nonleading questions soon after an event, using words they can understand

46. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse? (part 1) • The debate between memory researchers and some well-meaning therapists focuses on whether most memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy using “memory work” techniques using leading questions or hypnosis. What do you think?

47. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse? (part 2) • Those committed to protecting abused children and those committed to protecting wrongly accused adults have agreed on the following points: • Sexual abuse happens. • Injustice happens. • Forgetting happens. • Recovered memories are commonplace. • Memories of things happening before age 3 are unreliable. • Memories “recovered” under hypnosis are especially unreliable. • Memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

48. Improving Memory • The SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Retrieve, Review) study technique incorporates several learning strategies: • Rehearse repeatedly. • Make the material meaningful. • Activate retrieval cues. • Use mnemonic devices. • Minimize interference. • Sleep more. • Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to find out what you do not yet know.