MEMORY AND THINKING

1. MEMORY AND THINKING

2. MEMORY AND HOW IT WORKS • Memory: Learning that has persisted over time • To remember an event, we must successfully • Encode – get information into our brain • Storage – retain information • Retrieval – get information back out

3. HOW WE ENCODE Parallel processing – doing many things at once We automatically process information about space, time, frequency and well-learned information

4. Effortful processing – encoding that requires attention and conscious effort • Can be boosted through rehearsal – conscious repetition • Overlearning increases retention

5. Spacing effect – we retain information better when our rehearsal is distributed over time • Spaced study and self-assessment beats cramming

6. Serial position effect – tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list • Primacy effect – best recall for first items • Recency effect – best recall for last items

7. WHAT WE ENCODE • Visual encoding – encoding of images • Mnemonics – memory aids that use vivid imagery and organizational devices • Acoustic encoding – encoding of sounds • Semantic encoding – encoding of meaning, including meaning of words

8. SHORT TERM VS. LONG TERM MEMORY • Short-Term Memory • Limited, unless actively processed • Capacity of 7 digits +/- 2 • chunking - organizing items into familiar, manageable units • Better for random numbers than random letters • Better for sound than sight

9. STORING MEMORIES • Flashbulb memories – clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event • Strong emotional experiences = strong, reliable memories

10. Amnesia victims • Have implicit memory – how to do something • But no explicit memory – memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare”

11. RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT • Priming - often unconscious activation of particular associations in memory • “memoryless memory”

12. Context effects • Easier to remember things in the same context you learned them • Déjà vu - sense that “I’ve experienced this before” • Mood congruent memory - tendency to recall experiences that are consistent w/one’s current good or bad mood

13. WHY WE FORGET • Three sins of forgetting • Absent-mindedness - inattention to details • Transience - storage decay over time • Blocking - inaccessibility of stored info

14. Three sins of distortion • Misattribution - confusing the source of the information • Suggestibility - lingering effects of misinformation • Bias - belief-colored recollections • One sin of intrusion • Persistence - unwanted memories

15. FORGETTING Course of forgetting is initially rapid, but levels off w/time

16. Interference • Proactive interference - something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later • Retroactive interference - new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier

17. Freud believed we repress - banish anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories • Most psychologists disagree

18. FAULTY MEMORY CONSTRUCTION Misinformation effect - incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event

19. Source amnesia - attributing the wrong source to an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined • False memories feel as real as true memories • Unreliable memories • Things happening before age 3 • Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or drugs

20. IMPROVING MEMORY Study repeatedly Make the material meaningful Activate retrieval cues Use mnemonic devices Minimize interference Sleep more Test your own knowledge