Memory

1. Memory

2. Information processing • Encoding - Getting information in • Storage - Retaining information • Retrieval - Getting information out

3. Automatic & Effortful processing

4. Instant encoding & storage • Flashbulb memories • 9-11 • Titanic • President Kennedy • Space Shuttle Challenger

5. Encoding - Getting information in

6. Rehearsal (continuous repetition) • Spacing Effect • Ebbinghaus’s retention curve • We retain information better when study time is spaced out • Spaced study beats cramming - E.g. 12 - 5 minutesegments beat one hour of study

7. Serial Position Effect • We remember the first and last items better than ones in the middle.

8. Types on Encoding • Words that lend themselves to mental images (e.g. house) are remembered better that abstract low image words e.g. “domicile” • Semantic - meaning - Best (for words) • Acoustic - sounds (hearing the word) - • Songs? • Visual - images (seeing the type) - Least • Photos?

9. Self-reference effect • You remember items that refer to yourself

10. Encoding Imagery • Mnemonics (Greek for memory) • Method of Loci • Chunking • License plate • Phone # • Words • Association • E.g. Grocery list

11. “Peg word” system Numbers into pictures 1 = Bun 2 = Shoe 3 = Tree 4 = Door 5 = Hive 6 = Sticks 7 = Heaven 8 = Gate 9 = Swine 10 = Hen Attach items to be remembered to the pictures Mnemonics (cont.)

12. Storage - Retaining information

13. Sensory Memory • Iconic Memory - What our eyes register • Fleeting photographic memory • Lasts only a few tenths of a second

14. Short term memory

15. Memory decay

16. Brain (synaptic) changes • Long-term potentiation (LTP) • Stimulating neurons increased efficiency • Sending neuron released its neurotransmitter more easily • Receptor sights may increase. • May explain why experience and repetition can increase memory.

17. Long term memories

18. Implicit memories (procedural memory) • Remembering how to do something • Can not be consciously recalled

19. Explicit memories • Declarative memory • Can be consciously recalled • E.g. A person may retain past skills, but not remember them.

20. Retrieval - Getting information out

21. Retrieval cues

22. Priming • Memories are held by a web of associations - identify one strand and it leads to others • “Awakening of associations” • E.g. Wedding song • Retrieval cues can be sights, sounds, smells and tastes

23. Mood congruent memories - (State dependent memories) • We remember things best when we are in the same mood as when we did it or learned it. • E.g. Happy times are more apt. to be remembered when we are happy. • If you were drunk when you hid something, you are more apt. to remember where it is when you are drunk again. • (However, drinking - in general - reduces memory

24. Forgetting

25. Encoding failure • Names are forgotten because they were never encoded. • Storage decay • Penny example

26. Retrieval Failure • Proactive (forward-acting) interference • Earlier learning reduces later learning • Retroactive (backward-acting) interference • Later learning reduces earlier learning

27. Retrieval Failure (Cont.)

28. Retrieval Failure (Cont.)

29. Memory Construction

30. Misinformation effect • Given misinformation about an event someone experienced, they misremember the event.

31. Source amnesia (Source misattribution) • You remember something as real, but forget the source of the memory (e.g. a movie). • E.g. After repeatedly hearing false detailed accounts of an accident you were in, you begin to mistakenly “remember” that these events actually occurred. • (You forgot that they were told to you)

32. Repressed or constructed memories • Therapeutic techniques such as guided imagery can easily encourage construction of false memories. • Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or drugs are particularly unreliable.