Unit 1: Understanding the individual Memory

1. Unit 1: Understanding the individualMemory • Week one: What is Cognitive Psychology? Introduction to memory-processes, structures and key studies. • Week two: Models of memory- Multi store model and Working memory model. • Week three: Forgetting and Mnemonics- theories of forgetting, strategies for remembering informaiton.

2. The Development of Cognitive Psychology • Cognitive psychology developed, in part, as a reaction against the behaviourists’ emphasis on external events. • In 1925, Wolfgang Kohler published a book called, The Mentality of Apes. In this book he reported observations which suggested that animals could show behaviour which was insightful, and he rejected behavourism in favour of an approach called Gestalt psychology.

3. What is Cognitive Psychology? •  The other challenge to behaviourism came from Tolman, a ‘soft behaviourist’ who published Purposive Behaviour in Animals and Man in 1932. • In this book he described research which was difficult to explain in terms of traditional behaviourism. • Instead of associations between stimulus and responses for learning he suggested that learning was based on relationships among stimuli, referred to as cognitive maps. • (task-directions to…)

4. What is Cognitive Psychology? • Both Kohler and Tolman had an important influence in laying the foundation of the cognitive approach but since no single theorist has dominated the cognitive approach there has been a greater exchange with other approaches, both within and outside psychology.

5. What is Cognitive Psychology? • Cognitive psychology focuses on the way we perceive, process, store and respond to information. For cognitive psychologists the internal processes are the core of their science. They argue that there must be a level between stimulus input and behaviour output – these are the internal processes (mediators) • Whilst these internal processes cannot be directly observed, the use of models, computers and controlled experiments gives modern cognitive psychology its greater scientific credibility.

6. What is Cognitive Psychology? • Perception – refers to the taking in and analysing of information from the world. • Attention – enables us to concentrate on one or more sources of information and to maintain that focus. • Language – involves the use of symbols as tools of both communication and thinking. • ·Memory – is the storage of information about facts, events and skills.

7. What is Cognitive Psychology? • The use of the computer as a tool for thinking about how the human mind handles information is known as the computer analogy. • By the end of the 1960s psychologists had taken the computer analogy to its next stage and put together programmes called computer simulations that carried out simple cognitive processes such as storing information (Collins and Quillian, 1969). • Connectionist models attempt to simulate language learning (as opposed to language being innate)

8. What is Cognitive Psychology? • Eysenk (1984) described three basic characteristics of modern cognitive psychology: • ·Research tends to be laboratory-based rather than relating to everyday life. However, there are some signs of broadening into real-life areas, for example eye-witness testimony and dyslexia. • ·The focus of research tends to be specific, rather than on general problems. Experiments are conducted on such items as the articulatory loop (memory). This can fragment or bias the body of knowledge, although it can be argued that more information will be gained from this narrowing of research focus. • ·Emotional and motivational influences are generally regarded as complicating and confusing, in general, there is an attempt to minimise or eliminate them.

9. What is Cognitive Psychology? • The scope of cognitive psychology is becoming broader and now even includes such ‘irrational’ aspects of behaviour as emotion. • Whatever the topic, the key elements of the cognitive approach remain the same: • ·Processes within the person are considered central to understanding behaviour. • ·These mediating processes operate in an organised and systematic way, not by trial and error.

10. What is Cognitive Psychology? Groome et al (1999) have identified 3 major strands to contemporary cognitive psychology: • ·Experimental cognitive psychology uses experiments to explore how the human mind responds to different situations and therefore how it works. • ·Cognitive science is the branch that deals with constructing and testing computer simulations of human cognitive processes. • ·Cognitive neuropsychology involves the study of cognitive processes in the living brain. This often involves the study of people who have suffered brain damage and so have lost or partially lost certain cognitive abilities.

11. What is Cognitive Psychology? Group activity: What is memory? Why/what do we remember? Why/what do we forget? Why is it important?

12. What is Memory Memory is a cognitive process used to encode, store, and retrieve information. • ·Encoding – means to put something into a code, in this case the code used to store information in the memory. Encoding takes many forms: visual, auditory, taste, smell etc • ·Storage – as a result of encoding, the information is stored within the memory system. • ·Retrieval – the recovery of stored information from the memory system. It includes recognition, recall and reconstruction.

13. What is Memory Several theories of memory are based on the assumption that there are 3 kinds of memory: · Sensory memory – this is a storage system that holds information in a relatively unprocessed form for fractions of a second after the physical stimulus is no longer available. Baddeley (1988) suggested that one function of this kind of storage is to allow information from successive eye-fixations to last for a long enough time to be integrated and so to give continuity to an individual’s visual environment

14. What is Memory • ·Short-term memory – this is a temporary place for storing information during which it receives limited processing. • Short-term memory has a very limited capacity and short duration, unless the information in it is maintained through rehearsal. • ·Long-term memory – this is a relatively permanent store which has unlimited capacity and duration.

15. What is Memory • ·Different kinds of long-term memory • have been identified: • ·episodic (memory for personal events) • ·semantic (memory for facts and information) • ·procedural (memory for actions and skills).

16. The nature of Short-term Memory •  Some researchers (eg Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) see short term memory simply as a temporary storage depot for incoming signals from the senses. • Others (eg Baddeley 1986) prefer to use the term ‘working memory’ to indicate its dynamic and flexible aspects. • By formulating theories/models of memory with specific features/hypotheses we can carry out experiments to test. e.g. Nature of encoding/duration/capactiy of STM? What would your model of memory look like?

17. Short-term Memory • Encoding • Information arrives in sensory memory in its original form (or ‘modality’), e.g. acoustic, visual, etc. However, as memory processes are unconscious individuals are not aware of which type of encoding they use. • Substitution error studies have provided much of the information about coding, e.g. Conrad (1964).

18. Short-term Memory • Questions • 1) Define the 3 stages of the memory process. (6 ku) • 2) Outline the 3 main structures thought be involved in memory. (6 ku)

19. Short-term Memory • Conrad (1964) • Aim: to find out whether people used acoustic coding in short-term memory, even when information was presented visually.

20. Short-term Memory • Procedure: • ·Participants were shown a random sequence of 6 consonants projected in rapid succession onto a screen. (The strings of consonants were either acoustically similar or acoustically dissimilar.) • ·Participants were asked to write down the letters in the same order as they appeared. • ·Letters were presented too fast for the participants to keep up, so they had to rely on memory. • ·Conrad noted the errors made by the participants.

21. Short-term Memory Findings: • The majority of the errors involved the substitution of a similar sounding letter • Participants found that it was more difficult to recall strings of acoustically similar letters in the correct order than dissimilar letters, even though they were presented visually. Conclusions: • ·The visually presented information must have been encoded acoustically. • ·The short term memory is primarily encoded on the basis of sound.

22. Short-term Memory • Baddeley (1986) found that words with similar sounds were much harder to recall than words, which did not sound alike. Similarity of meaning had only a slight detrimental effect on performance. • Baddeley, like Conrad, concluded that short-term memory relies more on the sound of words than on their meaning.

23. Short-term Memory • Other researchers (eg Brandimonte et al 1992) have found that although acoustic coding is the preferred method of encoding in short-term memory, other modes of representation are also possible. • Participants used visual encoding if they were given visual stimuli and prevented from doing any verbal rehearsal (la, la, la). • Capacity-Digit span activity…

24. Short-term Memory • Capacity • Jacobs (1887) conducted the first systematic study of the capacity of short-term memory by devising a technique called the ‘memory span’. • He found that the memory span for digits or letters was between 5 and 9 items and that short-term memory span increased with age (either due to increased brain capacity or memory techniques).

25. Short-term Memory • ‘Most people have a digit span of seven, plus or minus two’ • Miller (1956) • This has been called Miller’s magic number 7. Miller claimed that this finding holds good for lists of digits, letters, words or larger ‘chunks’ of information.

26. Short-term Memory • Miller reported that the key issue is ‘chunks’ (integrated pieces or units of information). About 7 ‘chunks’ of information can be held in the short-term memory at any one time. The question of what constitutes ‘chunks’ depends on personal experience. • ‘Chunking’ improves the capacity of memory but it may reduce its accuracy • Size of chunk important? Simon (1974) reported that people had a shorter memory span for larger chunks (e.g. eight word phrases –poem?) than smaller chunks (e.g. one syllable words)

27. Short-term Memory • Does information from sensory memory enter short-term memory through rehearsal alone? • E.g. List of letters: A,G . Y, M, R. • Knowledge of names of letters stored in long-term memory, • E.g. try remembering a list of symbols- very difficult as no names stored in LTM. • The fact that short-term memory contains new information and information retrieved from LTM has led some psychologists to prefer the term ‘ working memory’ (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Baddeley, 1986)