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AP Psychology

AP Psychology. Retrieval and Forgetting. Forgetting. An inability to retrieve information due to poor encoding, storage, or retrieval. Biological Reasons Experience Factors. Biological Factors. Damage to the Hippocampus Difficulty forming new memories Diminished in Alzheimer’s patients

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AP Psychology

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  1. AP Psychology Retrieval and Forgetting

  2. Forgetting An inability to retrieve information due to poor encoding, storage, or retrieval. • Biological Reasons • Experience Factors

  3. Biological Factors • Damage to the Hippocampus • Difficulty forming new memories • Diminished in Alzheimer’s patients • Neurotransmitters play a role • Acetylcholine • Alzheimer’s patients show low levels Acetycholine • Decay theory • Memories deteriorate because of the passage of time • Distractor Studies – information fades from STM

  4. Decay Theory Poor durability of stored memories leads to their decay. Ebbinghausshowed this with his forgetting curve.

  5. Retaining Spanish Bahrick (1984) showed a similar pattern of forgetting and retaining over 50 years. Andrew Holbrooke/ Corbis

  6. Biology Continued - Amnesia • Memory loss caused by accidents, surgery, poor diet, or disease • Retrograde amnesia • Loss of memory from prior to an accident or injury • Like a computer crashing without saving your essay.

  7. Retrieval Failure Although the information is retained in the memory store, it cannot be accessed. Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) is a retrieval failure phenomenon. Given a cue (What makes blood cells red?) the subject says the word begins with an H (hemoglobin).

  8. Experiences can affect Memory • Interference • Retroactive interference • Occurs when new information interferes with information already in memory • The ‘retro’ old info is interfered with by the new

  9. Retroactive Interference Sleep prevents retroactive interference. Therefore, it leads to better recall.

  10. Interference • Proactive interference • Occurs when information already in memory interferes with new information • Because of proactive interference, new learning is disrupted by old habits. • Psychologists have found that recall of later items can be improved by making them distinctive from early items. For example, people being fed groups of numbers to remember did much better when they were suddenly fed a group of words instead. This is called release from proactive interference

  11. Interference Learning some new information may disrupt retrieval of other information.

  12. I need a volunteer that knows their colors. • Don’t read the words, just say the colors they’re printed in and as fast as you can

  13. Red Yellow Green Blue Red Blue Yellow Green Blue Red

  14. Interference • When you look at the words you see both its color and meaning. • When they are in conflict you must make a choice • Experience has taught you that word meaning is more important than color so you retrieve that information. • You are not always in complete control of what you pay attention to.

  15. Interference

  16. Experience and Forgetting • Situational factors • Recall of information is better if environment is the same as when information was learned • State-dependent memory • Recall of information is better if person is in the same physiological state as when information was learned • Reconstruction • Memories can be altered with each retrieval • We do this to keep the schemata of our self and our environment

  17. Context Effects Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they learned the list underwater, while they recall more words on land if they learned that list on land (Godden & Baddeley, 1975). Fred McConnaughey/ Photo Researchers

  18. Develop motivation Practice memory skills Be confident in your ability to remember Minimize distractions Stay focused Make meaningful connections to what is in long-term memory Use mental imagery Use retrieval cues Rely on more than memory alone Be aware of possible distortion due to schemata How to Reduce Forgetting

  19. Some “forgetting” isn’t a retrieval problem at all. Encoding Failure We cannot remember what we do not encode.

  20. Which penny is real?

  21. Motivated Forgetting Motivated Forgetting:People unknowingly revise their memories. Repression:Adefense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. Culver Pictures Sigmund Freud

  22. Why do we forget? Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. We filter, alter, or lose much information during these stages.

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