Forgetting and Memory Improvement

1. Forgetting and Memory Improvement PSY 421 – Fall 2004

2. Overview • Forgetting • Interference • Cognitive Inhibition • Directed Forgetting • Memory Improvement • Memory Techniques • Prospective vs. Retrospective Memory

3. Forgetting • Exactly what is this? • Attention problems • Cognitive inhibition • Insufficient encoding • Poor performance on a memory test • Response bias • Mismatch between encoding and retrieval • Confusion • Inability to discriminate • Interference • Context effects • Notice that none of these options is associated with a physical abnormality that results in "terrible memory ability"

4. Interference • Types • Proactive – information learned before the target item was learned interferes with the memory for the target item • Retroactive – information learned after the target item was learned interferes with the memory for the target item • Experimental Method for Interference

5. Interference Findings • The greater number of previous trials you have had with a particular task, the lower your memory performance will be because of proactive interference – Underwood, 1957 • Interference occurs at retrieval – McGeoch, 1932 • Often times, multiple possible responses are competing to be the response given at test • Similarity can create interference – Release from Proactive Interference – Wickens, Born, and Allen, 1963 • Context (environmental) can also create interference to the extent that the cues it provides activate many responses or responses similar to that you are trying to retrieve

6. Cognitive Inhibition • Cognitive inhibition = the control of cognitive contents or processes (Harnishfeger, 1995) • Thought to improve across childhood and adulthood and decline with increase age • Age-related improvements in the ability to ignore both external sources of distraction (e.g., selective attention) • Most common type of inhibition is retrieval based = there is a loss of retrieval access to inhibited items, without a loss in the availability of those items in storage (E. L. Bjork, Bjork, & Anderson, 1998).

7. Directed Forgetting • The directed-forgetting paradigm - developed by R. A. Bjork (1972) • After material has been presented for study, participants are told to remember some of it and to forget the remainder • The remember and forget cues can be presented either after each item (item cuing) or after a group of items (list cuing) • If directed forgetting is successful, then there will be • (a) only a small number of intrusions of forget-cued items when participants are asked to recall only the remember-cued items • (b) a poor recall of forget-cued items when participants are asked to recall all items. • Research results indicate that young adults are able to minimize interference from the to-be-forgotten material (MacLeod, 1998) and that children begin to gain control over their forgetting in the elementary school years (Golding & Long, 1998; Lehman & Bovasso, 1993; Wilson & Kipp, 1998).

8. Memory Improvement • What do we know so far? • Pay attention • Elaborate, especially on meaning for what needs to be remembered • Try to anticipate under what conditions you will need to remember the information and then encode it under those same or similar conditions • Memory improvement devices • Mnemonic techniques • Method of loci (location) • Peg-Word technique • Keyword technique • Remembering to Remember

9. Mnemonic Devices • Mnemonic = • Naïve vs. Technical • Naïve = memory strategies we use spontaneously – without instructions • Acronyms with first letters • Imagery • Rhyming • Technical = strategies not used everyday, usually need to be taught how they work • Method of Loci – visual imagery and spatial information • Peg-Word technique – visual imagery to see "items" hung on a peg • Keyword technique – associating images with words and these images interact

10. Remembering to Remember • Remember to feed the cat – do your homework – go to the game – read an assigned chapter – send a birthday card – remembering to do something in the future = prospective memory • Benefit from external memory aids (writing things down) • Many of the everyday memory failures are failures of prospective memory • The makers of Post-it Notes – their muse? • Remembering the scientist who developed Structuralism – remembering what color the slides were last lecture – remembering the last time PSU beat Purdue in football – remembering something from the past = retrospective memory