Memory Systems and Key Terms: Understanding How We Remember

1. Chapter 7 Memory

2. Module 7.1: Learning Objectives Memory Systems • Define memory • Explain the three processes of memory—encoding, storage, and retrieval • List the three stages of memory in the Atkinson-Schiffrin model—sensory, short-term, and long-term • Describe sensory memory, including icons and echoes • Describe how information is transferred from sensory memory to short-term memory

3. Memory: Some Key Terms • Memory: • Active system that stores, organizes, alters, and recovers (retrieves) information • Encoding: • Converting information into a useable form • Storage: • Holding information in memory for later use • Retrieval: • Taking memories out of storage

5. Sensory Memory • Stores an exact copy of incoming information for a few seconds • The first stage of memory • Types of Sensory Memory: • Iconic memory: • A fleeting mental image or visual representation • Echoic memory: • After a sound is heard, a brief continuation of the sensory activity in the auditory system

6. Short-Term Memory (STM) • Holds small amounts of information briefly in consciousness • Very sensitive to interruption or interference • Working Memory: • Part of STM; like a mental “scratchpad” • Selective Attention: • Focusing (voluntarily) on a selected portion of sensory input (e.g., selective hearing) • Phonetically: • Storing information by sound; how most things are stored in STM

7. Long-Term Memory (LTM) • Stores information relatively permanently • Stored on basis of meaning and importance

8. Module 7.2: Learning Objectives STM and LTM • Describe short-term memory, including its capacity, how information is encoded, the permanence of short-term memory, its susceptibility to interference, and the concept of working memory • Describe long-term memory in terms of permanence, capacity, and the basis on which information is stored • Define dual memory • Explain how one’s culture affects memory • Explain the “magic number” seven • Describe chunking • Explain how the two types of rehearsal affect memory

9. Module 7.2: Learning Objectives STM and LTM (Continued) • Discuss the permanence of memory, including the research done by Penfield and the Loftuses • Explain constructive processing, pseudomemories, and how “memory jamming” works in advertising • Describe the effects of hypnosis on memory and how a cognitive interview can improve eyewitness memories • Briefly describe how long-term memories are organized, including the network model and redintegrative memories • Differentiate procedural (skill) memory from declarative (fact) memory • Define and give examples of the two kinds of declarative memory (semantic and episodic)

10. Short-Term Memory Capacity • Digit Span: • Test of attention and short-term memory; string of numbers is recalled forward or backward • Typically part of intelligence tests • Magic Number 7 (Plus or Minus 2): • STM is limited to holding seven (plus or minus two) information bits at once • Information Bits: • Meaningful units of information

11. Short-Term Memory Concepts • Recoding: • Reorganizing or modifying information in STM • Information Chunks: • Bits of information that are grouped into larger units • Maintenance Rehearsal: • Repeating information silently to prolong its presence in STM

12. More Short-Term Memory Concepts • Elaborative Rehearsal: • Links new information with existing memories and knowledge in LTM • Good way to transfer STM information into LTM

13. Long-Term Memory • Long term memories are relatively permanent • Constructive Processing: • Updating long-term memories on basis of logic, guessing, or new information • Pseudomemories: • False long-term memories that a person believes are true or accurate • Network Model: • LTM is organized as a network of linked ideas

15. Redintegrative Memory • Memories that are reconstructed or expanded by starting with one memory and then following chains of association to related memories

16. Types of Long-Term Memories • Skill Memory • Procedural: • Long-term memories of conditioned responses and learned skills • e.g., driving • Fact Memory: • Declarative: • Part of LTM that contains factual information

17. More Types of Long-Term Memories • Fact Memory: • Semantic Memory: • Impersonal facts and everyday knowledge • Subset of declarative memory • Episodic: • Personal experiences linked with specific times and places • Subset of declarative memory

20. Module 7.3: Learning Objectives Measuring Memory • Discuss how memory is tested, including the concepts of partial memories, the tip-of-the-tongue state, and the feeling of knowing • Describe and give examples of each of the following ways of measuring memory: recall (including the serial position effect), recognition (including a comparison to recall and the concept of distractors), and relearning (including the concept of savings score) • Distinguish between explicit and implicit memories • Describe priming

21. Measuring Memory • Tip-of-the Tongue (TOT): • Feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable • Feeling of Knowing: • The ability to determine if you are likely to remember something • Recall: • To supply or reproduce memorized information with a minimum of external cues • Serial Position Effect • Hardest to recall items in the middle of a list • Usually easiest to remember last items in a list because they are still in STM

23. Measuring Memory (Continued) • Recognition Memory: • Ability to correctly identify previously learned material • Usually superior to recall • Distractors: • False items included with a correct item • Wrong choices on multiple-choice tests • False Positive: • False sense of recognition

24. Relearning • Learning again something that was previously learned • Used to measure memory of prior learning • Most sensitive measure of memory • Savings Score: • Amount of time saved when relearning information

25. Memory and Awareness • Explicit Memory: • Past experiences that are consciously brought to mind • Implicit Memory: • A memory not known to exist • Memory that is unconsciously retrieved • Priming: • When cues are used to activate hidden memories

26. Module 7.4: Learning Objectives Forgetting • Explain Ebbinghaus’ curve of forgetting • Discuss the following explanations of forgetting: encoding failure, decay of memory traces, disuse (including why this explanation is questioned), cue-dependent forgetting, state-dependent learning, retroactive and proactive interference, and repression (including the recovered memory/false memory debate and how repression differs from suppression) • Describe flashbulb memories, retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and the consolidation of memory, including the effects of ECS and the role of the hippocampus • Discuss the research on where in the brain different types of memories are stored, the relationship between learning and transmitter chemicals, and long-term potentiation

27. Forgetting • Most forgetting occurs right after memorization • Nonsense Syllables: • Meaningless three-letter words (fej, quf) that test learning and forgetting • Ebbinghaus’ Curve of Forgetting: • Graph that shows amount of information remembered after varying lengths of time • Encoding Failure: • When a memory was never formed in the first place

30. Memory Decay • Memory Traces: • Physical changes in nerve cells or brain activity that occur when memories are stored • Memory Decay: • When memory traces become weaker • Fading or weakening of memories • Disuse: • Theory that memory traces weaken when memories are not used or retrieved

31. Memory Cues • Any stimulus associated with a memory • Usually enhance retrieval of a memory • A person will forget if cues are missing at retrieval time

32. State-Dependent Learning • When memory retrieval is influenced by body state • If your body state is the same at the time of learning ANDthe time of retrieval, retrievals will be improved • If Robert is drunk when he parks his car and forgets where his car is parked once he is sober, it will be easier to recall the location if he gets drunk again!

34. Even More Theories of Forgetting • Interference: • Tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of older memories, and vice versa • Retroactive Interference: • Tendency for new memories to interfere with retrieval of old memories • Proactive Interference: • Old memories inhibit (interfere with) recall of new memories

38. Transfer of Training • Positive Transfer: • When mastery of one task aids mastery of a second task • Negative Transfer: • When mastery of one task conflicts with mastery of a second task

39. More on Forgetting • Repression: • Unconsciously pushing painful, embarrassing, or threatening memories out of awareness/consciousness • Motivated forgetting, according to some theories • Suppression: • Consciously putting something painful or threatening out of mind or trying to keep it from entering awareness

40. Flashbulb Memories • Memories created during times of personal tragedy, accident, or other emotionally significant events • Where were you when you heard that terrorists attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001? • Includes both positive and negative events • Great confidence is placed in them even though they may be inaccurate

42. Memory Formation • Retrograde Amnesia: • Forgetting events that occurred before an injury or trauma • Anterograde Amnesia: • Forgetting events that follow an injury or trauma • Consolidation: • Process by which relatively permanent memories are formed in the brain

43. Memory Structures • Hippocampus: • Brain structure associated with information passing from short-term memory into long-term memory • If damaged, person can no longer “create” long-term memories and thus will always live in the present • Memories prior to damage will remain intact • Also associated with emotion

45. Brain and Memory PLAY VIDEO

46. Module 7 5: Learning Objectives Exceptional Memory and Improving Memory • Differentiate the concepts of internal mental images and eidetic imagery, and explain how these abilities are different from having an exceptional memory • Discuss how each of the following can improve memory: knowledge of results (feedback), recitation, rehearsal, selection, organization, whole versus part learning, serial position effect, cues, overlearning, spaced practice, sleep, hunger, extension of memory intervals, review, and other strategies that aid recall, including the cognitive interview

47. Eidetic Imagery (Somewhat Like Photographic Memory) • Occurs when a person (usually a child) has visual images clear enough to be scanned or retained for at least 30 seconds • Usually projected onto a “plain” surface, like a blank piece of paper • Usually disappears during adolescence and is rare by adulthood • Mental Images: • Mental pictures of objects and events

49. Ways to Improve Memory • Knowledge of Results: • Feedback allowing you to check your progress • Recitation: • Summarizing aloud while you are learning • Rehearsal: • Reviewing information mentally (silently) • Selection: • Selecting most important concepts to memorize • Organization: • Organizing difficult items into chunks • A type of reordering

50. Ways to Improve Memory (Continued) • Whole Learning: • Studying an entire package of information at once, like a poem • Part Learning: • Studying subparts of a larger body of information (like text chapters) • Progressive Part Learning: • Breaking learning task into a series of short sections • Serial Position Effect: • Making most errors while remembering the middle of the list • Overlearning: • Studying is continued beyond initial mastery